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<pre>

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, October
1879, by Various

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Title: The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, October 1879

Author: Various

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Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONTEMPORARY REVIEW, OCTOBER 1879 ***




Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, Nigel Blower and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net






</pre>


<div class="notes">
<p>The first part of this volume (September 1879) was produced as Project
Gutenberg Ebook #30048. The relevant part of the table of contents has
been extracted from that document, and a brief title page added.</p>

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<h1>THE<br />CONTEMPORARY<br />REVIEW</h1>
<h3>VOLUME XXXVI. OCTOBER, 1879</h3>

<hr />

<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
<table summary="Contents">
  <tr>
    <th class="condat" colspan="2">OCTOBER, 1879.</th></tr>
  <tr>
    <td>&nbsp;</td>
    <td class="conpgh">PAGE</td></tr>
  <tr>
    <td class="concht">India and Afghanistan. By Lieut.-Colonel R. D. Osborn</td>
    <td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_193">193</a></td></tr>
  <tr>
    <td class="concht">Critical Idealism in France. By Paul Janet</td>
    <td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_212">212</a></td></tr>
  <tr>
    <td class="concht">On the Moral Limits of Beneficial Commerce. By Francis W.
      Newman</td>
    <td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_232">232</a></td></tr>
  <tr>
    <td class="concht">The Myths of the Sea and the River of Death. By C. F.
    Keary</td>
    <td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_243">243</a></td></tr>
  <tr>
    <td class="concht">Mr. Macvey Napier and the Edinburgh Reviewers. By Matthew
      Browne</td>
    <td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_263">263</a></td></tr>
  <tr>
    <td class="concht">The Supreme God in the Indo-European Mythology. By James
      Darmesteter</td>
    <td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_274">274</a></td></tr>
  <tr>
    <td class="concht">Lazarus Appeals to Dives. By Henry J. Miller</td>
    <td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_290">290</a></td></tr>
  <tr>
    <td class="concht">The Forms and Colours of Living Creatures. By Professor St.
      George Mivart</td>
    <td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_313">313</a></td></tr>
  <tr>
    <td class="concht">Contemporary Life and Thought in Turkey. By an Eastern
      Statesman</td>
    <td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_334">334</a></td></tr>
  <tr>
    <td class="concht">Contemporary Books:—</td></tr>
  <tr>
    <td class="conchb">I. History and Literature of
      the East, under the Direction of Professor E. H. Palmer</td>
    <td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_350">350</a></td></tr>
  <tr>
    <td class="conchb">II. Classical Literature,
      under the Direction of Rev. Prebendary J. Davies</td>
    <td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_359">359</a></td></tr>
  <tr>
    <td class="conchb">III. Essays, Novels, Poetry,
      &amp;c. under the Direction of Matthew Browne</td>
    <td class="conpag"><a href="#Page_366">366</a></td></tr>
</table>

<hr />

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p>

<h2>INDIA AND AFGHANISTAN.</h2>

<p>When the news arrived that Major Cavagnari and his companions
had fallen victims to the fury of the Kabul populace, the <i>Daily
Telegraph</i> “called aloud, before Heaven, for a punishment which should
ring from end to end of the Continent of Asia.” It is a pity that so
much fine and eloquent indignation should be expended on the Afghans
instead of those who are truly responsible for the catastrophe which
has evoked it. If ever there was a future event which might be predicted
with absolute certainty, it was that Major Cavagnari and his
companions would perish precisely as they have done. Twice, within
forty years, have we invaded Afghanistan, although on both occasions
we have frankly avowed that with the inhabitants of the country we
had no cause of quarrel whatever. Nevertheless, we carried fire and
sword wherever we went, cutting down their fruit trees, burning their
villages, and leaving their women and children shelterless under a
winter sky. What could we expect as the fruit of such acts, except
that our victims—knowing, as we did, that they were revengeful,
passionate, and too ignorant to forecast the consequences of their actions—should
retaliate in kind the moment that they had the opportunity?
The first invasion of Afghanistan is now known by general consent as
“the iniquitous war;” but it is open to question if even that war was
so elaborately contrived, or so long laboured for as this—the first act
of which has terminated in the slaughter of Major Cavagnari and his
escort.</p>

<p>The circumstances which preceded it are briefly these. For eighteen
months Lord Lytton had attempted, by alternate threats and cajolery,
to prevail upon the Ameer Shere Ali to make a surrender of his independence,
and become a vassal of the Indian Empire. These attempts
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>
having failed, war was declared against him on the pretence that he
had insulted us before all Asia by declining to receive a “friendly”
mission sent by the Indian Government. This mission was <i>not</i> friendly.
It was notorious throughout India that it would go to Kabul charged
with an <i>ultimatum</i> which offered the Ameer the choice of war, or the
sacrifice of his independence. But even this mission the Ameer never
refused to receive—nay, it is certain that he would have received it if
the opportunity had been given to him, so great was the value he
attached to English friendship. But what the Government of India
desired was not the reception of the mission, but a pretext for making
war upon the Ameer. It knew that the policy which it meditated in
Afghanistan would so completely destroy the sovereignty of the Ameer,
that it was impossible he should agree to it. At the same time, it was
impossible to declare war against an independent prince, simply because
he declined to divest himself of his independence. The war must,
somehow or another, be made to appear as if it were due to some act
of the Ameer. Consequently, almost from the hour in which the
announcement was made that the mission was to start, the Ameer was
plied with insults and menaces which, if they were not intended to
drive him to some act of overt hostility, had no purpose at all. And
when these proved unavailing, Lord Lytton directed Sir Neville Chamberlain
to attempt to force his way through the Khyber Pass, without
waiting for the permission of the Ameer. In the most courteous
manner the Afghan officer, in command at the Khyber, intimated
to the mission that, without the sanction of his master, it was impossible
to allow it to proceed; and this refusal was instantly telegraphed to
England as a deliberate insult which must be wiped out in blood.
From first to last, so far as his conduct towards us is concerned, the
Ameer was absolutely blameless. During his entire reign his consistent
endeavour had been to draw closer the ties of amity between himself
and us. The Russian mission had forced its way to Kabul,
despite of all his endeavours to hinder its advance; and there can be
no question that but for the previous action of Lord Lytton that
mission would never have come to Afghanistan. But eighteen months
before that occurrence Lord Lytton had withdrawn our Native Agent
from the Court of the Ameer. This had been done as a mark of displeasure,
and a proof that no alliance of any kind existed between the
two States. This proceeding Lord Lytton followed up by the occupation
of Quetta, although he was well aware that such an occupation
would be interpreted—and rightly—by the Ameer, as a menace to his
independence, and the harbinger of war. So it came about that when
the Russian mission knocked for admission at the doors of his capital,
the Ameer found himself on the one side threatened by Russia, and on
the other abandoned and threatened by Lord Lytton. Lord Lytton,
in point of fact, is as directly responsible for the entry of the Russian
mission to Kabul as he is for the dispatch of his own.</p>

<p>But if Lord Lytton’s treatment of the Ameer was cruel and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>
ungenerous, criminal, at least to an equal extent, was his treatment of
the people over whom he ruled. At that time there was an appalling
amount of suffering all over India. The country had been ravaged
by a series of famines. In the Punjab prices were abnormally high.
The North-West Provinces were still unrecovered from a dearth, during
which the Government of India had exhibited a rapacity and indifference
to human suffering which would, with difficulty, be credited in England.
Terrible as is the mortality resulting from a famine in India, the death-roll
represents but a tenth part of the suffering which such visitations
inflict. For every human being that dies, ten are left, without money
and without physical strength, to struggle feebly for existence on the
margin of the grave. They cannot give a fair day’s work for a fair
day’s wage. They may reckon themselves fortunate if their enfeebled
powers can earn just sufficient to keep body and soul together. For
all these wretched beings—and last year in Upper India they numbered
many millions—the smallest rise of price in the necessities of life means
death from hunger. A war, therefore, with the enormous rise of prices
which it would immediately produce, was nothing less than a sentence
of torture and death passed upon tens of thousands of our own subjects.
Undeterred, however, by the warnings of experience, deaf to considerations
of humanity and justice, the Government of India started on
its wild-goose chase after a “Scientific Frontier.” The victims whom
it trampled to death in this mad chase have never been numbered—they
never can be numbered. The Afghans who died in defence of
their village homes form but a hundredth part of them. The residue
was composed of our own mute and uncomplaining subjects.</p>

<p>A war thus wantonly commenced resulted in a failure as ignominious
as it deserved. Long before the Treaty of Gundamuck the
ambitious policy of the Government had become an object of contempt
and ridicule all over India. It was known that Lord Lytton and his
advisers were at their wit’s end to discover something which might be
made to do duty as a “Scientific Frontier,” and so bring a misjudged
enterprise to a conclusion. But it is the peculiarity of our Ministers
to believe that they can arrest the inexorable sequence of cause and
effect by a dexterous manipulation of the faculty of speech. Lord
Beaconsfield appears to have imparted to his colleagues his own belief
in the omnipotence of phrases to remove mountains, and make rough
places smooth. So the Treaty of Gundamuck was no sooner signed
than Ministers and Ministerial journals raised a great hymn of triumph
over the wondrous things which they had wrought in Afghanistan.
The one solid national advantage to be derived from the sacrifice of
Cavagnari and his comrades, is that this method of treating facts will
have to be laid aside. Lord Lytton is not likely to appeal again to his
“carefully verified facts” as a proof that he is a much wiser man than
Lord Lawrence. Lord Cranbrook will not again express his conviction
that the “objections (to an English Resident) expressed by Shere Ali
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>
will be shown to have been without substantial foundation.” Yakoub
Khan and his five attendants are all that remain of that “strong,
friendly, and independent Afghanistan” which Mr. Stanhope informed
the House of Commons had been created by the war. The anguished
cry of the <i>Daily Telegraph</i> “for a punishment which shall ring from
end to end of the Continent of Asia” is the latest expression of the
“results incalculably beneficial to the two countries” which, according
to Lord Lytton, were to flow from the Peace of Gundamuck.</p>

<p>A failure in policy more signal and more complete than this it is
impossible to imagine. But it is to be noted that the Ministerial
journals are doing their utmost to save the “Scientific Frontier” from
the destruction which has overtaken the projects of the Ministry. And
so long as a belief in this Frontier is cherished anywhere, the return to
a safe and rational policy is obstructed. In the following pages, therefore,
I shall, firstly, endeavour to show that the (so-called) “Scientific
Frontier” is as purely fictitious as the “strong, friendly, and independent
Afghanistan” which we were told had been created out of
chaos by means of the war. And, secondly, I shall discuss the various
lines of conduct which lie open to us, when we have occupied Kabul,
in order to determine which is best fitted to ensure the stability of our
Indian Empire and the contentment of its inhabitants.</p>

<h4>The Scientific Frontier.</h4>

<p>In all the discussions on this Frontier question, a very obvious, but
all-important, fact has been persistently forgotten. It is that British
rule in India is a rule based upon military supremacy; and that,
therefore, our Indian army—English as well as native—is primarily a
garrison, having its duties upon the places where it is quartered. We
could not withdraw our troops from any part of India without
incurring the risk of an outbreak in the districts thus denuded. The
“Punjab Frontier Force” has always been a force distinct from the
“Army of India,” and recognized as having special duties of its own.
So far as I know, in the discussions on a “Scientific Frontier” no
reference has been made to the above circumstance. The Indian army
has been spoken of as if it were so much fighting power, which we were
free to concentrate at any point we pleased. And to this oversight is
due the hallucination that an improved frontier would enable us to
diminish the strength of the Indian garrison (properly so called).
The fact is, that before this last war we had almost the very frontier
which our situation in India required. If the authority of the Ameer
had extended up to the boundaries of our Empire, troubles between the
two States must have occurred, resulting inevitably in the extinction of
the weaker. The evil of such an extension of territory no one denies;
we should not only have had to hold Afghanistan with a strong
garrison—certainly not less than twenty thousand men—but we should
have been compelled to maintain a frontier force, to guard against
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>
aggression from without, either from Russia or Persia. Forty thousand
men would have been needed for this double duty, in addition to the
pre-existing garrison of India. But by a piece of supreme good
fortune the authority of the Ameer did not begin where ours left off.
Between us and him were interposed the tribes which dwell in the
hills along our North-Western frontier. These tribes acknowledged
allegiance neither to him nor to us. Broken up and divided amongst
themselves, the worst they could inflict upon us was an occasional raid
into our territories; and these we could repress without having to call
the Ameer to an account for the lawlessness of his subjects. A few
regiments of horse and foot were all that we needed for the defence
of our frontier; while as against foreign invasion we possessed a frontier
that needed no defence at all. That frontier consisted of the foodless
deserts and inaccessible hills of Afghanistan. These were impenetrable
to an invader, so long as we retained the friendship and the confidence
of the people who dwell among them. Consequently, to quote the
language of Sir Henry Rawlinson, “our main object has ever been,
since the date of Lord Auckland’s famous Simla Manifesto of 1838, to
obtain the establishment of a strong, friendly, and independent Power
on the North-Western frontier of India, without, however, accepting
any crushing liabilities in return.” We all know the manner in which
Lord Auckland set about obtaining the “strong, friendly, and independent
Power,” and the “crushing liabilities” we had to accept in
consequence. Tutored by experience, we adopted a wiser and more
righteous policy, which was producing admirable results.</p>

<p>The difficulty of establishing a stable friendship with Afghanistan
arises from the character of the people. It is the habitation, not of a
nation, but of a collection of tribes, and the nominal ruler of Afghanistan
is never more than the ruler of a party which, for the time, chances to
be strongest. Consequently there never existed an authority, recognized
as legitimate throughout the country, with which we could enter into
diplomatic relations. At the same time, their divided condition crippled
the Afghans for all offensive purposes. We had, therefore, nothing to
fear in the way of unprovoked aggression, and our obvious policy was
to win the confidence of these wild tribes and their chiefs, by carefully
abstaining from encroachments on their independence. Such, in fact,
has been the policy which every Governor-General has pursued in the
interval which divides the “plundering and blundering” of Lord
Auckland from the like achievements of Lord Lytton. And it had
been attended with the greater success, because under the firm
guidance of two remarkable men, Afghanistan had progressed considerably
towards the status of an organized kingdom. Shere Ali had
diligently trod in the footsteps of his father, the Dost, and it is in these
terms that the Government of India describes the rule and policy of the
Ameer in the year 1876:</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span></p>
<div class="blockquot"><p>“Those officers of our Government who are best acquainted with the affairs
of Afghanistan, and the character of the Ameer and his people, consider that the
hypothesis that the Ameer may be intimidated or corrupted by Russia (even
supposing there was any probability of such an attempt being made) is opposed
to his personal character and to the feelings and traditions of his race, and that
any attempt to intrigue with factions in Afghanistan, opposed to the Ameer,
would defeat itself, and afford the Ameer the strongest motive for at once disclosing
to us such proceedings. Whatever may be the discontent created in
Afghanistan by taxation, conscription, and other unpopular measures, <i>there can
be no question that the power of the Ameer Shere Ali Khan has been consolidated
throughout Afghanistan in a manner unknown since the days of Dost Mahomed,
and that the officers entrusted with the administration have shown extraordinary
loyalty and devotion to the Ameer’s cause</i>. It was probably the knowledge of the
Ameer’s strength that kept the people aloof from Yakoub Khan, in spite of his
popularity. At all events, Herat fell to the Ameer without a blow. The rebellion
in Salpoora in the extreme West was soon extinguished. The disturbances in
Budukshan in the North were speedily suppressed. <i>Nowhere has intrigue or
rebellion been able to make head in the Ameer’s dominions.</i> Even the Char Eimak
and the Hazara tribes are learning to appreciate the advantages of a firm rule....
But what we wish specially to repeat is that, from the date of the Umballa
Durbar to the present time, <i>the Ameer has unreservedly accepted and acted
upon our advice to maintain a peaceful attitude towards his neighbours</i>. We have
no reason to believe that his views are changed.”</p></div>

<p>This “strong, friendly, and independent Power”—this edifice of order
and increasing stability—the British Government deliberately destroyed
in the insane expectation of finding a “Scientific Frontier” hidden
somewhere in the ruins. It is difficult to conceive of an action more
impolitic or more cruel. In a month the labours of forty years were
obliterated, old hatreds rekindled, and the wounds of 1838, which the
wise and gentle treatment of former Viceroys had almost healed, were
opened afresh.</p>

<p>We come next to the inquiry as to what this “Scientific Frontier”
is, in order to obtain which this act of vandalism was perpetrated. This
is a question involved in some obscurity. The <i>Times</i> is the great champion
of the “Scientific Frontier,” but in its columns, as also in Ministerial
speeches, it changes colour like a chameleon. Sometimes it is called
the “possession of the three highways leading to India,” thereby
rendering the Empire “invulnerable.” At other times it is recommended
to us because it protects the trade through the Bolan Pass, and
enables us to threaten Kabul. The fact is that the (so-called) “Scientific
Frontier”—meaning thereby the frontier we acquired by the Treaty of
Gundamuck—is a make-believe, an imposture. It is not the “Scientific
Frontier” in pursuit of which we “hunted the Ameer to death” and
reduced his territories to a condition of anarchy.</p>

<p>Those who have followed the history of the war with attention will
remember that in September of last year the Calcutta correspondent of
the <i>Times</i> was smitten with a really marvellous admiration for Lord
Lytton. “India,” he wrote, “is fortunate in the possession at the
present time of a Viceroy specially gifted with broad statesmanlike
views, the result partly of most vigilant and profound study, partly of
the application of great natural intellectual capacity to the close cultivation
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>
of political science and the highest order of statecraft.” Here
we have the portrait of the lion painted by himself; and it is not surprising
that this superb creature should have regarded with considerable
scorn the policy of his predecessors who never claimed to be “specially
gifted” for the exercise of “the highest order of statecraft.” “The
present measure,” the correspondent went on to say, “for the despatch
of a mission to Kabul forms but a single move in an extensive concerted
scheme for the protection of India, which is the outcome of a
long-devised and elaborately worked-out system of defensive policy.”
Here we have a fine example of the “puff preliminary.” In the
issue of the <i>Times</i> for the 10th September this “extensive concerted
scheme for the protection of India” is detailed at length, and is there
plainly set forth as intended for a barrier against Russia:—</p>

<div class="blockquot"><p>“The Indian Government are most anxious to avoid adopting any policy
which would bear even the semblance of hostility towards Russia, but the
extreme probability of a collision sooner or later cannot be overlooked. It is
necessary, therefore, to provide for a strong defensive position to guard against
eventualities. From this point of view it is indispensable that we should possess
a commanding influence over the triangle of territory formed on the map by
Kabul, Ghuznee, and Jellalabad, together with power over the Hindoo Khosh....
This triangle we may hope to command with Afghan concurrence if the
Ameer is friendly. The strongest frontier line which could be adopted would
be along the Hindoo Khosh, from Pamir to Bamian, thence to the south by the
Helmund, Girishk, and Kandahar, to the Arabian Sea. It is possible, therefore,
that by friendly negotiations some such defensive boundary may be adopted.”</p></div>

<p>Such were the moderate designs entertained by the Indian Government
when they dispatched what they called a “friendly mission” to
the Court of the Ameer. If Lord Lytton imagined that “friendly
negotiations” would obtain these tremendous concessions from the Ameer,
it would show that a training in “the highest order of statecraft” does
not preserve even a “specially gifted” Viceroy from the credulousness
of an infant. But his acts show that he entertained no such belief.
He felt, as every one must feel who reads the extract I have made, that
demands such as these must be preceded by a war. Hence the menacing
letters addressed to the Ameer; hence the rude and insulting manner in
which Sir Neville Chamberlain was ordered to attempt an entrance into
Afghanistan without awaiting the permission of the Ameer; and hence,
finally, the monstrous fiction of a deliberate “insult” inflicted upon us,
when, in point of fact, we had been the “insulters” all along. The
obvious intention throughout was to obtain a pretext for declaring war,
because without a war the “Scientific Frontier” was manifestly unattainable.
Lastly, when war had been determined upon, the same
“official” correspondent came forward in the <i>Times</i> to make known the
objects of the impending campaign. “We have,” he wrote, “been
driven into what will probably be a costly war entirely against our will,
and all our endeavours to avoid it. The occasion, therefore, will now
be seized to secure for ourselves the various passes piercing the mountain
ranges along the whole frontier from the Khyber to the Bolan; and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>
further <i>strategic measures will be adopted to dominate entirely the Suleiman
range and the Hindoo Khosh</i>.”</p>

<p>It is impossible not to admire the hardihood of this remarkable
correspondent when he alleges that the war was “entirely against our
will, and all our endeavours to avoid it.” But this is not the matter
with which I am at present concerned. The official character of these
communications will be denied by no one, and they make it clear that
the “Scientific Frontier” was intended as a barrier against Russia, and
would have made the Hindoo Khosh the external boundary of the
Indian Empire. Such a frontier is manifestly the dream of a military
specialist, to whose mental vision the Indian Empire, with all its
diverse interests, has no existence except as a frontier to be defended
against the Russians. And it illustrates the ignorance and precipitate
folly which has plunged us in our present difficulties that a project so
wild should have been seriously entertained. To have carried it out
the subjugation of Afghanistan would have been an indispensable preliminary,
and then the civilizing of it, by means of a system of roads
and strong garrisons throughout the country; the entire cost of these
vast operations being defrayed by a country already taxed to the
last point of endurance, heavily burdened with an increasing debt, and
ravaged by periodical famines. Such, however, was the “Scientific
Frontier” for which a “specially gifted Viceroy,” trained in “the
highest order of political statecraft,” declared war against the Ameer.
But the frontier which we obtained at the close of the war, and which
Ministers and Ministerial journals would have us believe is the genuine
article which they wanted from the beginning, is not only not this
frontier, but it has not the smallest resemblance to it.</p>

<p>The new frontier does not differ from the old except in three particulars.
We hold the Khyber Pass as far as Lundi Kotal, and we
have acquired the right to quarter troops in the Kurram Valley and the
Valley of Peshin. Of these the Kurram Valley is a mere <i>cul-de-sac</i>,
leading nowhere. But I will not ask of my readers to accept of my
judgment on this matter. Among the best known advocates for a forward
and aggressive policy in Afghanistan is Dr. Bellew. An accomplished
linguist and an experienced traveller, he accompanied Colonel Lumsden’s
mission to Kandahar in 1857; he was also a member of the mission
entrusted with the settlement of the Seistan boundary question, and no
man living is better acquainted with the geography and people of Afghanistan.
I believe it will not be denied that Lord Lytton, during the recent
war, trusted largely in his knowledge and suggestions. He has thus
expressed himself on the policy of occupying the Kurram Valley:—</p>

<div class="blockquot"><p>“The Kurram Valley would involve the addition of about one hundred and
fifty miles of hill frontage to our border, and would bring us into contact with
the independent Orakzais, Zaimukhts, Toris, Cabul-Khel, Waziris, and others,
against whose hostility and inroads here, as in other parts of the border, we
should have to protect our territory. By its possession, as we are now situated,
we should be committed to the defence of a long narrow strip of land, a perfect
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>
<i>cul-de-sac</i> in the hills, hemmed in by a number of turbulent robber-tribes, who
are under no control, and acknowledge no authority. In ordinary times its acquisition
would add to the serious difficulties of our position. In times of trouble
or disturbance on the border, its possession would prove a positive source of
weakness, a dead weight upon our free action. In it we should run the risk of
being hemmed in by our foes in the overhanging hills around, of being cut off
from our communications with the garrison of Kohat, by the Orakzais on the one
side, by the Waziris on the other. These are the disadvantages of the step. In
return what advantages should we derive? Not one. With Kurram in our
possession we certainly could not flank either the Khyber or the Goleri Pass,
because between it and the one, intervenes the impassable snowy range of Sufed
Koh; and between it and the other, intervenes the vast routeless hilly tract of the
Waziris. From Kurram we could neither command Kabul nor Ghazni, because
the route to either is by a several days’ march, over stupendous hills and tortuous
defiles, in comparison with which the historical Khyber and Bolan Passes, or
even the less widely-known Goleri Pass, are as king’s highways.”</p></div>

<p>This, I think, is sufficient to dispose of the Kurram Valley. If the
old frontier has been rendered “invulnerable,” it is not the acquisition
of the Kurram Valley which has made it so. There remains the Peshin
Valley. This valley is an open tract of country lying almost midway
on the line of march between Quetta and Kandahar, but nearer to the
former than the latter. Three easy marches from Quetta suffice to place
a traveller in the centre of it. It cannot accurately be described as
an extension of our frontier, because it is dissevered from it by more
than two hundred miles of difficult country. Between the valley and
British territory, the lands of the Khan of Khelat are interposed in one
direction, and numerous robber-tribes—Kakers, Murrees, Bhoogtees—in
another. Until the valley is securely linked to the Indus by a railway
from Sukkur to the Bolan Pass—a costly work, which could not be
executed in less than seven years—it will be impossible to quarter more
than a few thousand men in it—and these for six months of the year
will be as completely detached from their base of supply and reinforcement
in India, as if a tract of empty space ran between them. So far
from ensuring any increased security to India by our premature occupation
of this valley, we have only enhanced the chances of a hostile
collision with the rulers and people of Afghanistan. We were already
in military occupation of Quetta, and until easy and rapid communication
had been established between Quetta and the Indus, nothing was
to be gained by a yet further advance from our base. As a barrier
against Russia this frontier is without meaning, and no better proof of
this fact could be adduced than Sir Henry Rawlinson’s commentary
upon its merits in the Article on the “Results of the Afghan War”
which recently appeared in the <i>Nineteenth Century</i>:—</p>

<div class="blockquot"><p>“The Afghan settlement is a very good settlement as far as it goes, but it is
not immaculate—<i>it is not complete</i>. To yield us its full measure of defence, the
Treaty must be supplemented by all legitimate precautions and supports. <i>Persia
must be detached from Russia coûte que coûte.</i> Russia herself must not be left
in any uncertainty as to our intentions. She must be made to understand ...
<i>that she will not be permitted unopposed to establish herself in strength ...
even at Abiverd</i>, nor to commence intrigues against the British power in India.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>
She might indeed be warned that, if necessary, we were prepared in self-defence
to support the Turcomans—with whom she has no legitimate quarrel—with arms
or money, or even to turn the tables on her by encouraging the efforts of the
Uzbegs to recover their liberty.... <i>It would be almost fatuity at such a moment
to withdraw our garrison from Candahar....</i> Yacub Khan must be made
to see that it is as much for his interest as our own to hold an efficient body of
troops in such a position that, on the approach of danger ... <i>they might, with
military alacrity, occupy Herat as an auxiliary garrison</i>.”</p></div>

<p>And what is implied in detaching Persia from Russia he explains in
another part of his Essay.</p>

<div class="blockquot"><p>“If Russia, as there is strong reason to believe, is now pushing on to Merv or
Sarakhs ... with the ultimate hope of occupying Herat, then it might very
possibly be a sound policy to extend to Persia the provisions of the Asia Minor
Protectorate, or even to support her actively in vindicating her rights upon the
frontier of Khorassán.”</p></div>

<p>From all which it would appear that our “Scientific Frontier” is
simply good for nothing until it has been supplemented by an offensive
and defensive alliance with the barbarian enemies of Russia all over
the world. In order to ensure the safety of India, we must protect
not only our own “Scientific Frontier,” but we must guarantee the
Sultan all his Asiatic possessions; we must be ready at any moment to
fight for the “integrity and independence” of Persia; we must be
prepared to march our troops to Herat, and to show a front against the
Russians on the Oxus; we must provide the Tekeh-Turcomans with arms
and money, and assist the Uzbegs in their attempts to recover their
liberty. Such are the “legitimate precautions and supports” which
are requisite to render the new frontier immaculate and complete. But
if with a “Scientific Frontier” we remain liable to such tremendous
demands as these, it passes imagination to conjecture in what respect
we could have been worse off when our frontier was “haphazard.”</p>

<h4>The Circumstances of the Peace.</h4>

<p>I shall next endeavour to show the circumstances which compelled the
Indian Government to acquiesce in a peace which thus left the avowed
object of the war unfulfilled. The preparations for the invasion of
Afghanistan were on a scale corresponding to the magnitude of the
enterprise as explained by the “official” correspondent of the <i>Times</i>.
Troops were set in motion for the North-West frontier from garrisons
in the extreme south of India. Men were sent from England to man
heavy gun batteries. In addition to the troops under General Roberts,
no less than three columns were formed to invade Afghanistan viâ
Sukkur and the Bolan, and the same number to advance through
the Khyber. The force which marched to Kandahar was supplied
with four heavy gun batteries, and a fifth was sent up subsequently,
although, except upon the supposition that permanent entrenched
camps were to be formed in Afghanistan, these heavy guns were
simply an encumbrance and a source of danger. But the campaign
had barely commenced before the Government became aware that
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>
it had utterly miscalculated its cost and difficulty. It is easy enough
for an army to enter Afghanistan; it is next to impossible for it to
subsist when it has got there. It is easy enough to scatter the Afghans
when collected in battle array; it is next to impossible to subjugate
them because they never are <i>so</i> collected. From these causes our raid
into Afghanistan was but little removed from an ignominious failure.
If we had not made peace we should have been compelled to evacuate
the country from the enormous costliness of retaining troops in it.
Under such circumstances, a peace was needed too urgently to allow the
Government to stand out for any extraordinary concessions. They took
what they could get, which proved to be, as we have seen, the right to
place garrisons in the two valleys of Kurram and Peshin. But having
gone to war in search of a “Scientific Frontier,” no alternative was left
to them except to frankly confess that they had not found it; or to
affirm that these two valleys constituted it.</p>

<p>We come now to the causes of our failure. These are all-important,
and ought to dissipate for ever the fear of an invasion of India by
Russia or any other Power. The plan of the campaign required that
Afghanistan should be invaded from three points; but the most important
operation was understood to be the advance of General Stewart
upon Kandahar. As soon as hostilities appeared inevitable, a small
force under General Biddulph had been sent forward to secure Quetta
against a sudden attack. General Stewart followed later on, and the
two columns numbered upon paper about 20,000 men, with 60 guns.
Meanwhile, a third column was ordered to assemble at Sukkur in
support, and placed under the command of General Primrose. These
extensive preparations were supposed to indicate the determination of
the Indian Government to push on as far as Herat. The distance which
had to be traversed between Sukkur and Kandahar is, roughly speaking,
about four hundred miles, but the country presents extraordinary
difficulties. From Sukkur to Jacobabad extends a level tract which,
during the rains, is flooded to a depth of seven feet. Between Jacobabad
and Dadur—a town situated at the entrance of the Bolan Pass—extends
the Sinde desert. Any large force marching across this desert
would have to take with them, not only food and forage, but water, for
only at intervals of fifteen or twenty miles is the parched and barren
soil pierced by a few brackish springs, which just suffice for the needs
of the hamlets which have sprung up around them. For six months of
the year this desert is literally impassable. A hot wind sweeps across
it, which is fatal to man and beast. Only once did the Indian Government
venture to send troops across it after this “blast of death” (as the
natives call it) had begun to blow. This was in the last Afghan war.
Some hundreds of native troops were sent as an escort in charge of
supplies, and in four days one hundred Sepoys perished, three hundred
camp followers, and (I think) nine officers out of fourteen. Beyond
Dadur is the Bolan Pass. This Pass is about eighty miles in length;
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>
regular road there is none; what purports to be a road is merely the
bed of a stream, which, during the rainy weather, is filled from bank to
bank with a volume of rushing water. Neither food nor forage is
obtainable in the Pass, and even the camels, when starting from Dadur,
had to carry a seven days’ supply of food for themselves. Between
Quetta and Kandahar the country is open, but neither is food procurable
for a large force, nor forage for the horses and camels. From first to
last General Stewart’s troops were almost wholly fed from India. The
winter, luckily, was one of unprecedented mildness. But for this, in
place of a march upon Kandahar, a terrible catastrophe could hardly
have been averted. In ordinary seasons the snows fall heavily in and
around Quetta early in November, and the cold is intense. The Bolan
Pass is swept from end to end by hurricanes of wind and rain and
snow. At the very time when these storms usually occur we
had a dozen regiments and batteries straggling along the whole
length of the Bolan Pass. Last year, however, there was neither
snow nor hurricane, and our troops got through the Pass in safety.
There was no opposition offered to our advance on Kandahar, but,
from the want of food and the hardships which had to be endured,
no less than twenty thousand camels perished upon the march. This
mortality decided the campaign. When General Stewart reached
Kandahar the situation was as follows:—The magazines at Quetta were
nearly empty. Four months’ food was collected at Sukkur, but awaited
carriage for its transport to Quetta. The third column under General
Primrose was assembling on the Indus, and needed ten thousand camels
to enable it to advance. To supply all these wants there were at
Sukkur about 1600 camels. In order to lessen the pressure on the
Commissariat, General Stewart divided his forces, despatching one
column to hunt for supplies in the direction of Giriskh, and sending
another with the same object to Khelat-i-Ghilzie. These movements
caused the death from cold and hunger of a large additional number of
camels, and demonstrated that there was not food in that part of
Afghanistan sufficient for a force so large as that collected at Kandahar.
Sinde, meanwhile, had been swept so bare of camels that it was impossible
to collect a sufficient number for the carriage of food to Quetta
before the hot weather had set in, and the march across the desert was
barred by “the blast of death.” Immediate action was necessary if
General Stewart’s troops were not to starve; and eight thousand men
returned to India, reducing the garrison left at Kandahar to four
thousand. This number, it was trusted, the Commissariat would be
able to feed during the hot weather. But even this small force was so
scantily supplied with carriage that it could not have moved, in a body,
for fifty miles in any direction. It was, so to speak, nailed to the spot on
which it was encamped. This want of food, far more than the physical
difficulties of the country, is and always will be the insuperable obstacle
to carrying on extensive military operations in Afghanistan. The people
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>
obtain no more from the soil than just suffices for their own wants; and for
days together an invading army has to pass over huge wastes with hardly
a trace of human habitation, and consequently destitute of food.</p>

<p>Not a little amusing was the revulsion of feeling caused throughout
India by the lame and impotent conclusion of the advance on Kandahar.
It was a demonstration of the impossibility of an invasion which convinced
those who were most reluctant to be convinced. If when we
had all India from which to draw our supplies, and with no enemy to
oppose us, our utmost efforts had merely sufficed to place four thousand
men in Kandahar, and leave them there, isolated and defenceless, it was
chimerical to suppose that the Russians could march for double that
distance an army capable of attempting the conquest of India. “Kandahar,”
writes a military correspondent to the <i>Pioneer</i>—the official
journal of India—“is acknowledged to be a mistake, and it is hoped
that a British army will never again be dispatched in that direction; it
is a mere waste of men, money, and means, and an unsuitable line for
either attack or defence.”</p>

<p>And the <i>Pioneer</i>, the very purpose of whose existence is to preach
the infallibility of the Indian Government, thus endorses the remarks
of its correspondent: “The theories about Kandahar are by this time
exploded; indeed, there are many critics who have refused to adopt
them from the very beginning; believing against General Hamley, that
the main road into Afghanistan, whether we march as defenders of the
Kabul Ameer or as avengers, must lie past Peshawur and Jelalabad.”</p>

<p>The failure on the Kandahar side placed the Indian Government in
an extremely difficult position. An advance on Herat was plainly out
of the question; even one on Ghuznee was beyond the power of General
Stewart and his troops. Elsewhere the aspect of affairs was hardly less
cheering. The expedition in the Kurram Valley had resulted in the
somewhat ignominious retreat out of Khost. We had about 15,000
men holding the line from the Khyber to Jelalabad; but in effecting
this, 14,000 camels had perished, and several of the regiments had been
more than decimated from sickness and exposure. We had not
subjugated a rood of territory on which our troops were not actually
encamped. The main strength of the Ameer’s army was untouched,
while all along our Trans-Indus frontier the hill tribes were in a state
of dangerous unrest. The hot weather was coming on apace, when
cholera and typhoid fever would be added to the number of our
enemies. Thirty thousand troops had been set in motion, the garrisons
in the interior of India dangerously weakened; three millions of money
expended; and this was all that had been achieved. If now Yakoub
Khan refused to come to terms, what was to be done? General Brown
might be ordered to force his way from Jelalabad to Kabul, but what
was he to do when he got there? The cost in money would be
certainly heavy—the cost in men, not improbably, heavy also. And if,
on our arrival at his capital, Yakoub Khan retired to either Balkh or
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>
Herat, we were powerless to follow him. Yakoub Khan, in fact, had
the game in his hands. We had shot our bolt and failed. He had
simply to decline to make peace, and keep out of our reach. We
should then have been compelled either to evacuate the country, or to
occupy it with the certainty that a little later on we should be compelled
to withdraw, when the drain on the finances of India became
too heavy to endure. Sir Henry Rawlinson rightly says, that a very
small force can march from one end of Afghanistan to another; but
a very large force is requisite permanently to hold it. The tribal
divisions which hinder unity of resistance hinder also the achievement
of any decisive victory. Each tribe is an independent centre of life,
which requires a separate operation for its extinction.</p>

<p>Such was the dilemma in which the Government found themselves
involved. It was almost equally disastrous either to withdraw or to
advance. If the troops were withdrawn, they would return burdened
with the ignominy of failure. If they advanced, it would be into a
tangle of military and political embarrassments, the issue of which it was
impossible to foresee. There was only one way of escape possible,
and that was to relinquish the ambitious projects from which
the war originated, and acquiesce in any settlement which the
adversary would agree to. The result was the Treaty with Yakoub
Khan—a Treaty which I have no hesitation in saying has placed in peril
the existence of our Indian Empire.</p>

<p>It is, indeed, impossible to account for the infatuation or the obstinacy
which caused the Indian Government to stipulate for the
reception of an undefended British Envoy at the Court of a prince in
the position of Yakoub Khan. It would have been so easy to have
introduced a clause in the Treaty, to the effect that as soon as Yakoub
Khan’s authority was firmly established an English Envoy should be
accredited to Kabul. This would have saved the political consistency
of the Government without exposing the Indian Empire to the tremendous
strain and peril of a second Afghan expedition. There was absolutely
nothing to be gained, either in India or England, by immediately
forcing an English Envoy on the luckless Yakoub; while it enormously
enhanced the difficulties with which he had to cope. Nevertheless,
in the face of historic precedents, in defiance of multiplied warnings,
Lord Lytton deliberately resolved to reproduce, for the edification of
Asia, the tragedy of Shah Soojah and Sir William Nacnaghten, the
only difference being that on this occasion the principal parts were
played by Yakoub Khan and Major Cavagnari. The fact is that from
first to last in this bad business the chief agents were moving in a world
of their own imagining. They appear to have persuaded themselves
that they had but to refuse to <i>see</i> facts, and the facts would vanish.
They had but to publish in the <i>Times</i> that Lord Lytton was a “Viceroy
specially gifted,” and forthwith he would become what he was described
to be. They had but to assert that the Afghans had no objection to
the presence of a British Envoy at Kabul, and immediately their objections
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>
would disappear. The mischief is done now past recall. Hardly
even in 1857 was our Indian Empire in a position of greater peril than
it is now. The persistent opposition between official acts and official
language which has been the distinguishing characteristic of Lord
Lytton’s administration has created an universal disbelief in the sincerity
of our speech and the equity of our intentions. In the circle which
surrounds the Viceroy, it seems, indeed, to have become an accepted
maxim that it is a matter of indifference whether or not the natives are
heartily loyal to our rule. And Sir Alexander Arbuthnot, in his Minute on
the Repeal of the Cotton Duties, notes the fact as “a grave political danger.”
It is a maxim which could not have been formulated except by the
agents of a Government who felt that they had forfeited, past hope of
recovery, the confidence of those they were set to rule over. Of the
alienation itself there can be no question. The loyalty of the native
has, probably, never been at a lower ebb since 1857. And any reverse
in Afghanistan might kindle a flame that would spread from one end
of India to the other.</p>

<p>But there is nothing to be gained by anticipating greater difficulties
than already beset us. I will assume that no additional complications
occur—that General Roberts has succeeded without much difficulty in the
occupation of Kabul—that General Stewart has possession of Kandahar,
and that all we have to determine is what to do with Afghanistan now we
have got it. There are but three courses of conduct possible—withdrawal
from the country altogether, a return to the arrangements formulated
in the Treaty of Gundamuck, or annexation. I will consider the last
first.</p>

<h4>Annexation.</h4>

<p>Nobody, so far as I know, desires to annex Afghanistan. But there
are, I apprehend, but few who are aware of what is involved in “the
annexation of Afghanistan,” and the danger is that we may drift almost
unwillingly into annexation, to discover the full consequences only when
too late. Everybody is agreed that India cannot defray the costs.
This is set down by the supporters of Government at a sum of five
millions annually. I believe it would be much larger; but we will
assume that five millions is a correct estimate. By no possibility could
we screw this additional sum from the people of India. Already the
expenses of the administration increase at a far quicker rate than the
revenues which have to meet them. The costs of governing Afghanistan,
therefore, would have to be defrayed from the English Exchequer.
But assuming this to be arranged, the pecuniary difficulty is the smallest
which has to be encountered. To garrison the interior and frontier
of Afghanistan we should require not less than forty thousand men—one-half
of whom would have to be English soldiers. For, until
the interior of Afghanistan is completely opened out by roads which
can be traversed throughout the year, the garrisons holding the country
would have to be sufficiently strong to be independent of reserves and
supports during the winter. And if we attempted to hold Balkh and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>
Herat, twenty thousand English soldiers would not suffice. Now where
are these English soldiers to come from? An addition of at least forty
thousand men to our regular army would be required in order to supply
them. But the English part of our Afghanistan garrison does not
present so insuperable a difficulty as the native. It would not be safe,
at least for many years, to organize our native garrison from the Afghans
themselves. The regiments would have to be recruited in India
specially for this service—but out of what races? The natives of the
Southern parts of India have not the physique capable of enduring the
severities of an Afghanistan winter. The Sikhs or Hindoos of Upper
India would certainly not enlist in a service which carried them so
far from their homes into the midst of an alien people and an alien
faith. The only recruits we should obtain in large numbers would be
Muhammadans. The danger, then, is obvious. In India the fierce
fanaticism of the Moslem creed is mitigated by its contact with the
milder tenets of Hindooism; but remove an Indian Moslem to Afghanistan,
and he would very soon become inspired by the religious zeal of
his co-religionists around him. We should be exposed to the risk, perpetually,
of our native garrison combining with the people of the country
to expel the infidel intruders from the land, and restore the supremacy of
the Prophet. But even these dangers dwindle into insignificance when we
contemplate the main result of an annexation of Afghanistan. That result
would be that the hills and deserts of Afghanistan would no longer extend
between the Russian Power and our own. We should have given to Russia
the power to interfere directly in the internal concerns of India.</p>

<p>I have never supposed Russia to have any sinister designs upon
India. After much reading I have failed to discover any proof of such
designs. Those who suspect Russia obtain their evidence by a very
simple process. They reject as incredible the objects assigned by the
Russian Government as guiding its policy, and substitute their
own fixed preconception in place of them. I believe that neither
Russia nor any other Power would accept of India as a free gift. I
cannot imagine a rational statesman coveting for his country so burdensome
and unprofitable a responsibility. But that a Russian Government
should ever attempt the invasion and conquest of India is to me
beyond the power of belief. What Mr. Cobden wrote in 1835 appears
to me as convincing at this day as it was then.</p>

<div class="blockquot"><p>“China,” he wrote, “affords the best answer to those who argue that Russia
meditates hostile views towards our Indian possessions. China is separated from
Russia by an imaginary boundary only; and that country is universally supposed
to contain a vast deposit of riches well worthy of the spoiler’s notice. Besides,
it has not enjoyed the ‘<i>benefit</i>’ of being civilized by English or other Christian
conquerors—an additional reason for expecting to find a wealthy Pagan community,
waiting, like unwrought mines, the labours of some Russian Warren
Hastings. Why, then, does not the Czar invade the Chinese Empire, which is
his next neighbour, and contains an unravaged soil, rather than contemplate, as
the alarmist writers and speakers predict he does, marching three thousand miles
over regions of burning deserts and ranges of snowy mountains to Hindostan,
where he would find that Clive and Wellesley had preceded him?”</p></div>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>
Apart, however, from the question of motives, it is not possible to
march an army from Herat to the Indus. And we must always bear
in mind that even if the Russian army reached the Indus, their real
work, instead of being over, would only then commence. With that
vast extent of hill and desert behind them they would have before
them some sixty thousand British troops in an entrenched position.
Even a victory would leave the invader begirt about with dangers and
difficulty; a defeat would be his utter annihilation. Not a soldier of
the army of invasion would return to tell the tale. It is impossible to
divine where or how Russia could raise the money for so gigantic an
enterprise; and if the money was forthcoming it is not credible that
any Government should fling it away on such a hopeless undertaking.
In assuming that Russia will refrain from an attack upon India, there
is no need to credit either the Government or the people with more than
that ordinary common sense which hinders men and nations from
attempting to achieve the impossible.</p>

<p>The danger to India arises not from the existence of any Russian
designs against our Empire, but from the belief that such exist. This
belief will, so to speak, hybernate for a season; then all at once we
find it in full activity, and creating a panic in every heart of which it
takes possession. These are the critical moments for the well-being
and security of our Indian Empire. In such a period of panic we
rushed into the disastrous war in Afghanistan in 1838. Under the
influence of like feelings we involved ourselves in the inglorious raid
the first act of which has just terminated. On both occasions we have
been guilty of assailing a Prince whose only desire was to form an
intimate alliance with us. On both occasions we have carried fire and
sword among a people with whom we frankly avowed that we had no
assignable cause of quarrel. But so long as Afghanistan extended
between us and the Russian dominions in Asia it was physically impossible
to declare war against Russia. In our unreasoning panic we fell
upon the Ameer and his people, because there was no one else to attack.
But if we make the Hindoo Khosh our military frontier, then Russia,
by assembling a few thousand men upon the Oxus, can, whenever
she pleases, agitate India from one end to the other. She will not
need to attack. The menace will be sufficient. For we must remember
that the undisputed supremacy of British rule in India depends, in
the main, upon two conditions, both of which are destroyed if we annex
Afghanistan. The one is, that no heavier burden be laid upon the
people than they are willing to bear; and the other, the absence of any
hope of deliverance. The cost of maintaining our supremacy in Afghanistan
<i>will</i> make the burden of our rule utterly intolerable alike to our
native soldiers and our civil population; the assembling of a Russian army
on the frontiers of Afghanistan will provide the hope of deliverance.
The hazards and uncertainties of the situation would keep the natives in
a state of perpetual unrest. The ambitious and the disaffected would
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>
engage in intrigue and conspiracy; trade would languish; the internal
development of the country be abruptly arrested; and the Empire
would assuredly be wrested from our hands on the occasion of the first
European war in which we became involved.</p>

<h4>The Treaty of Gundamuck.</h4>

<p>Annexation being impossible, is it wise, or is it practicable, to return
to the provisions of the Treaty of Gundamuck? It is neither wise nor
possible, for the simple reason that this Treaty was based upon a fiction.
It was grounded upon the utterly false assumption that there existed in
Afghanistan a central authority, acknowledged as legitimate by all the
people of Afghanistan, with whom we could establish permanent diplomatic
relations. There is no such authority. Instances have been
adduced of attacks made upon European Embassies in other Oriental
countries, and the argument has been put forward, that as, notwithstanding
such outbreaks, diplomatic relations have been maintained with
Turkey and Persia, there is no reason to conclude from the fate of Major
Cavagnari that they are impossible in Afghanistan. The cases are not
parallel. The Ameer of Kabul has no such authority in his capital or
throughout his dominions as the Sultan or the Shah. It is possible,
though not very probable, that a British Envoy might reside in Kabul
without being murdered, but the measure of his utility would depend
upon the fluctuating fortunes of the Ameer to whom he was accredited.
The only way to obviate this would be to place a force at the disposal
of the Envoy, sufficient to put down all insurrectionary movements
against the Ameer. But if we undertook this duty, we should become
responsible for the character of the civil administration. We could not
punish the victims of a cruel or rapacious Ameer, without at the same
time cutting off at their source the cruelty and rapacity, by the deposition
of an unworthy ruler. And thus, in a very brief time, we should
find that virtually we had annexed the country. Facts are stubborn
things, and it is worse than useless to fight against them. Those who
contend that the murder of Major Cavagnari ought not to be allowed to
overturn what they term the “settled policy” of the Ministry, are bound
to show in what way this “settled policy” can be carried out. How do
they propose to obtain an Ameer towards whom all the sections of the
Afghans shall practise a loyal obedience? And if no such Ameer can
be obtained, with whom or with what are we to establish diplomatic
relations?</p>

<h4>The Policy of Withdrawal.</h4>

<p>There remains the policy of withdrawal. The surest barrier
against foreign aggression in India is to be obtained in the contentment
and prosperity of the people. A people thus situated are prompt to
repel invasion, and secret intrigue is deprived of the conditions essential
to its success. But in order that the people of India should be prosperous
and contented, it is absolutely necessary that the financial burdens
they have to carry—and especially the military charges—should not
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>
be enhanced. It is not possible to advance our military frontier—even
to the extent of the (so-called) “Scientific Frontier”—without an enormous
enhancement of our military expenditure. And all military expenditure
is unprofitable, in the sense that it takes so much from the
tax-payer and brings him no material equivalent. Consequently, whatever
else this forward policy accomplishes, it cannot fail to impoverish
the people and stimulate their discontent. Moreover, the incidents of the
war have demonstrated that an invasion of India from Central Asia is physically
impossible. We started from the Indus, firmly resolved to march to
Herat, if necessary; but when we had reached Kandahar, we found it impossible
to advance further. It would be equally impossible for a Russian
army to march from Herat to the Indus. There is, therefore, no such
reason for a change of frontier as was alleged in justification of the war.</p>

<p>In all probability there is not even a Tory in England who does not
in his heart approve of a policy of withdrawal; but there are, he would
say, difficulties in the way. There are. After all the glowing eulogies
they have pronounced upon themselves, it will not be pleasant or easy
for Ministers to transfer these eulogies to their opponents. It will be
extremely disagreeable for a “specially gifted Viceroy” to have to confess
that his chiefest gift was a gigantic capacity for blundering. But if
India is to be preserved to the nation, there is no escape from this unpleasant
alternative. Either Ministers must acknowledge an error that
is now patent to all the world, or India must be saddled with the heavy
costs and the incalculable risks of an annexation of Afghanistan. These
risks, it must be remembered, are not transitory, but enduring; and if
we accept them, we must be prepared for a doom of absolute effacement
in the politics of Europe. The argument which will be urged against
withdrawing from Afghanistan is, of course, the old familiar one—the
loss of prestige. This is an argument impossible to refute because the
exact worth of prestige is an unknown quantity, as to which no two
people are agreed. But whatever be its value, to rush upon ruin and
destruction in order to preserve our prestige is an act of insanity.
It is as if a man should commit suicide in order to preserve his reputation
for courage. When we retired from Afghanistan in 1842, we frankly
confessed the mistake we had committed, and I am not aware that any
evil resulted from the confession. The wrongs that we had done left
behind them a legacy of evil, but not the confession of those wrongs.
And so it is now. The frontier policy of Lord Lytton has ruined our
reputation for justice, truthfulness, and generosity, and the stain of that
policy must cling to us for ever. We shall not conceal or efface it by
laying a crushing burden upon our native subjects and upon future
generations of Englishmen, in order to evade the humiliation of a confession.
On the contrary, we make what reparation is still in our
power when, in the interests of both, we refuse to annex Afghanistan.</p>

<p class="author"><span class="smcap">Robert D. Osborn</span>,<br />
<i>Lieutenant-Colonel</i>.</p>

<hr />

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span></p>

<h2>CRITICAL IDEALISM IN FRANCE.</h2>

<div class="blockquot"><p><i>La Science positive et la Métaphysique.</i> Par <span class="smcap">Louis Liard</span>,
Professeur à la Faculté des Lettres de Bordeaux. (Ouvrage
couronné par l’Institut de France.) Paris, 1879.</p></div>

<p>For some years past there has been observable in France, outside of
and in opposition to Positivism, a growing movement in favour of
idealism in general, and of the critical idealism of Kant in particular.
This philosophy, which had previously found very few adherents in our
country, has now begun to make its way into our teaching and our Universities.
Berkeley and Kant have been the subjects of special works,
and an attempt has been made to translate and reproduce their ideas by
harmonizing them with the principal doctrines of spiritualism. We
have here a movement full of promise and well deserving of
attention.<a name="FNanchor_1" id="FNanchor_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a>
Among the different productions affording some notion of this philosophical
tendency, we make choice—as being both the most recent and
the most complete—of a remarkable work, distinguished and crowned
by the French Institute, <i>Positive Science and Metaphysic</i>, by a young
and learned professor of Bordeaux, M. Louis Liard.</p>

<p>To begin with, M. Liard’s work is well composed, its plan being
simple, severe, and lucid. It divides itself into three parts. The first
is devoted to determining the nature and limits of positive sciences—that
is, of the sciences properly so called—and to showing that they cannot
pretend to abolish or replace metaphysics. In this portion of his
book the author discusses the three forms of the experimental philosophy
of our day, namely—Positivism, the philosophy of association, and that
of evolution.</p>

<p>In the second part, the author examines what he calls Criticism—that
is to say, the philosophy of Kant. The preceding discussion having
demonstrated that the human mind is incapable of departing from
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>
certain forms, certain laws, without which experience itself would be
impossible,—the author now resolves these into five fundamentals:
space, time, substance, cause, the Absolute. But are these forms or
laws of the mind the laws of things as well? Have they an objective
authority? We know that metaphysics hang upon the solution of this
question. We know, too, what is the solution given by Kant to this great
problem. In recognizing the necessary existence of these forms as laws
of the mind he disputes their external reality; hence he only admits
critical, not real and dogmatic metaphysic. Now, as regards this point
the author of the book under our notice, instead of dissenting from Criticism
as he had done from Positivism, appears on the contrary to accept
it by its own name, and to admire and endorse its conclusions. He
seems to grant or even to affirm that if Positivism is wrong, Criticism
is right, and that, strictly speaking, metaphysic is not a science.</p>

<p>And yet if metaphysic were not a science in the strict sense of the
word—that is to say, in the sense of objective sciences—would it follow
that it was nothing, or nothing more than criticism itself? By no means:
our author does not stop at that apparent solution; metaphysic according
to him has an object that criticism has not reached, has not shaken;
metaphysic has its own proper function, in which criticism can never
take its place. Only instead of founding it on the object, we must
found it on the subject. The mind must turn away from the external
world and re-enter itself. It is there that, without need of forms or
categories of which criticism has demonstrated the fallacy, the subject
grasps itself not only in its phenomena but in its being, and determines
itself in conformity to an end. This end is goodness: and this is
the only notion we can form to ourselves of the Absolute. Thus, metaphysic
is not the science of the object, but that of the subject; or if the
name of science be still withheld, it is at least the study of the subject,
and it is founded on and completed by morality. Thus, the author ends by
an evolution very similar to that of Kant, but with certain differences
which it will be our part to point out.</p>

<p>These constitute the three parts of the work. We will now take
them up in succession.</p>

<h4>I.</h4>

<p>Let us first of all consider the characteristics of positive science. It
has for its object the conversion of facts into laws, or in other words the
resolving the composite into the simple, the particular into the universal,
the contingent into the necessary. But let us observe with our author
that we are only dealing here with a relative simplicity, a partial
universality, a conditional necessity. None of these characters present
themselves in a really absolute manner. The simple is invariably composed
of several terms; the universal only applies itself to a certain class
of phenomena; the necessary is so only with relation to the consequences
of a law, but the law itself always remains contingent. Thus, no
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>
positive science can ever attain to the absolute. It is the same with
methods. These methods are induction and deduction. Now, however
precise these processes be, however marvellous the sequence and interdependence
of the propositions they discover and demonstrate, their data are
never more than particular and contingent facts; consequences, then, can
only be proportioned to those data. Hence it is certain that the positive
sciences cannot go beyond a relative universality or necessity. It may
seem as though we ought to make an exception in favour of mathematics.
But by a subtle discussion which it would be difficult to give summarily,
the author shows that they too come under the same law, whence it follows
that the domain of positive science properly so-called is contained within
the relative.</p>

<p>From this consideration there has sprung up in our day a philosophy
that reduces all sciences without exception to the knowledge of
relation, and by so doing has declared all metaphysics impossible:
and this philosophy is called Positivism. “Any proposition,” says Auguste
Comte, “which is not finally reducible to the simple enunciation of a
particular or general fact, is incapable of holding a real or intelligible
meaning.” “There is nothing absolute,” says the same philosopher,
“if it be not this very proposition that there is nothing absolute.” As
to the proof of this proposition, it lies, according to the school in question,
in the celebrated law which reduces all progress of the human mind
in all orders of research to three phases: the theological phase, in which
facts are explained by causes and supernatural agents; the metaphysical,
in which they are explained by abstract and ontological entities; and,
finally, the positive, in which phenomena are verified by experience and
referred to their laws—that is to say, to constant and always verifiable
relations of coincidence and succession.</p>

<p>Our author, having expounded this doctrine with much precision,
proceeds to criticize it with equal sagacity. He points out what
is illusory in this law of the three states; shows that it confuses
metaphysic with scholasticism; and proves, finally, that, in aiming at
merging mind in knowledge, and subordinating, as he says, the
subjective to the objective, Positivism does not understand what it is
speaking of, since all knowledge is ultimately referable to facts of consciousness—that
is to say, to something subjective, which is in effect,
as Descartes has pointed out, the only order of absolutely certain
truths. Besides which, let positive science, or rather the positive
philosophy, in the name of positive facts, proscribe metaphysic as it
will, is it not evident that the fundamental conceptions of all science—number,
atom, force, matter, cause, law—are metaphysical conceptions?
Is it not evident that all science whatever is impossible without a certain
number of principles or notions,—in a word, of intellectual laws, which
even govern experience itself? As yet the positive school has not answered
the learned demonstration of Kant on the necessity of the <i>à priori</i>
principle, or rather it has ignored it. It has made no addition to
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>
that old empiricism which the school of Leibnitz and of Kant had
refuted.</p>

<p>But since the Positivism of Auguste Comte, too little versed in metaphysical
knowledge to discuss it authoritatively, there have arisen two important
schools, the one of association, the other of evolution. The former
has endeavoured to base experience on an experimental and positive law;
the latter has generalized this law, and made of it a particular case of a
more general law embracing the whole of Nature—namely, the law of
evolution.</p>

<p>The doctrine of association may be referred to the fundamental law
that all ideas rising simultaneously or successively in the human mind,
tend invariably to recall each other in the same order; this is what is
called association of ideas. When any two ideas have thus been constantly
associated without ever being separated (as, for instance, form and
colour), they unite indissolubly and thus become necessary laws. Now, of
all these necessary connections, the most universal is this: no phenomenon
ever appears without having been preceded by some other
phenomenon, which is always the same under the same circumstances.
This law is that of causality, which is both the supreme principle and,
at the same time, the result of all experience. To this doctrine of
J. S. Mill and Alexander Bain our author opposes the two following objections:—1st,
How does it explain the generalization? 2nd, How does it
explain the necessity of the laws of the understanding? On the first
point the English School appeals to a law that it calls the law of <i>similarity</i>
or faculty of identifying the like in the different. But this is indeed,
strictly speaking, a fact of association? Should not association, properly
understood, be reduced to the law of contiguity—that is to say, to the
fact of our ideas only becoming associated through relations of time?
To admit the faculty of recognizing similarity in diversity, what is this
but to admit mind, intelligence—something, in short, which is other
than a simple external association? As to the second point, can we
reduce the rational necessity that Kant and Leibnitz have laid down as
the criterion of <i>à priori</i> principles to a pure necessity of habit—that is to
say, to the automatic expectation of the future inscribed on the past?
Where is the scientific guarantee in this hypothesis? Why should
Nature bend to our habits? “Who can assure us that we do not
dream in thinking of the future, and that the next sensation may not
interrupt our dream by an unforeseen shock?” We see how far-reaching
this doubt is; it affects not only metaphysic but science as well.</p>

<p>As to the philosophy of evolution, we know that, with regard to the
origin of the principles of thought, it consists in linking the experience
of present generations to that of generations past; in substituting
secular for individual experience—in a word, in filling up by the accumulation
of ages on ages the interval existing between particular and
contingent facts and the universality of principles. This hypothesis is
always at bottom no other than that of the <i>tabula rasa</i>, only it is no
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>
longer the individual who is this <i>tabula rasa</i>, since each one has,
by heredity, received a pre-formed intelligence. Nevertheless, under
pain of contradicting the hypothesis, we are forced to admit that there
was a first subject who, prior to the action of the object, must have
been this <i>tabula rasa</i>. But here the objections of Leibnitz reappear.
What can a pure, abstract, and unmodified subject be? And again,
before any meeting of subject with object, we have to admit a pure
object having nothing subjective, just as the subject had nothing
objective. What shall we affirm of this pure object? Let us divest it
if you will of colour, heat, sound; must we not at least conceive it as
extended, as existing in time, conceive it, that is, according to the necessary
forms that are supposed to be suppressed? For to say that it has
been capable of existing without having anything in common with these
forms, and that out of this unknown and nameless condition have
arisen, by way of transformation, the notions of which we treat, were to
admit that something <i>can</i> come out of nothing. We must therefore
acknowledge that universal notions do at least exist as germs at the
origin of evolution. It is not evolution that has created them, evolution
has only developed them, and be they ever so attenuated, they still
remain conditions without which nothing can be thought.</p>

<p>Such is the gist of the first part of M. Liard’s book, and we
have nothing to add to it but our approbation. We can but admire
the skilful analysis with which it begins, and the vigorous discussion
accompanying that analysis. The three stages traversed by the experimental
philosophy of our days—namely, Positivism, the Associative
Philosophy, and that of Evolution—are competently and precisely
summed up. The discussion is cogent, solid, and could not be further
developed without injury to the unity of the work. No doubt it
requires close attention to follow it; but it is lucid and well sustained.
Whatever the difficulty metaphysic may encounter in constituting itself
a science, and getting recognized as such, it has been established that
empiricism is not a tenable position, since it has been found necessary
to pass from positivism to association, from association to evolution;
while evolution itself still supposed some pre-formation. One thing is
certain, intelligence invariably contains a something that does not
come from without—namely, intelligence itself.</p>

<h4>II.</h4>

<p>The criticism of Positivism has taught us that there is no knowledge
possible without <i>à priori</i> elements—that is to say, without laws
inherent in thought, which impose themselves upon phenomena, so as
to constitute veritable knowledge. This is the system of Kant, and
thus that system avoids not only empiricism, but scepticism as well,
though commonly confounded with it. For without necessary laws
phenomena only form an arbitrary succession, entirely dependent upon
the organization of the individual; we have no longer anything but
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>
individual sensations. In the Kantian philosophy, however, the individual
is subjected to laws that are superior to himself; these are the
laws of human thought, and even, perhaps, of all thought whatever.
These laws impose themselves on each one of us in a necessary and
universal manner, and by so doing communicate to phenomena an
objective reality in this sense at least, that they are for individuals
veritable objects; and thus it is that mathematical truths are objects to
the intellect, even supposing they should be nowhere realized in any
existence independent of thought.</p>

<p>But are these laws of thought anything else than laws of thought?
Do they really attain to objective reality—to <i>things in themselves</i>. Kant
has denied that they do, and our author, in following in his steps, agrees,
or seems to agree, with the “Kritik” of Kant.</p>

<p>Let us then resolve the fundamental laws of the human intellect into
five principal concepts: these are, space and time, forms of sensibility,
substance and cause, laws of external experience, and, lastly, the Absolute,
the final and supreme condition of all knowledge. Now, according to
Kant and our author, these notions, at least the four first, are at the
same time necessary as subjective conditions of thought, and contradictory
so soon as we seek to realize them outside of thought.</p>

<p>For example, that space and time are found by implication in
every internal or external representation, that they are not the result
of abstraction and generalization, this has been firmly established by
Kant; for the elements from which some have sought to derive them
already imply them. But, at the same time, they are only internal
conditions, of which the objects are unrealizable outside of ourselves,
and the reason of this is given by M. Liard, as follows:—Space and
time have three essential characteristics, they are homogeneous, continuous,
and unlimited. Now, if we seek to make of space and time
<i>things in themselves</i> we may doubtless conceive them as homogeneous
and continuous, but not as unlimited, for no actual magnitude is unlimited;
all magnitude is expressed in numbers, and numbers are
necessarily finite, an infinite number involving a contradiction.</p>

<p>We will not enter into a question here mooted by the author, leading
to what Leibnitz calls the labyrinth of the continued (<i>Labyrinthus
continui</i>), or of invisibles; we will content ourselves with pointing out
that the reason here given is not by any means in conformity with the
ideas of Kant—indeed, that it contradicts them. In fact, our author here
applies to the two forms of sensibility the objection that Kant raised
only about real things and the sensible world. The world, indeed, being
composed of parts, can only be conceived as infinite by adding these
parts to each other, and by thus supposing the actual reality of an
infinite number. But it is not so with space, which, not being composed
of parts, is consequently not representable by numbers. “There
is only one single space, there is only one single time,” says Kant. The
notion of space is therefore not formed by the infinite addition of small
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>
portions of space and time. These are unities, not numbers. Hence illimitableness
is given with the very intuition. “Space,” says Kant, “is
represented as a given infinite magnitude,” <i>als eine gegebene unendliche
Quantität</i>. Now, so soon as the infinite is <i>given</i>, instead of <i>being made</i>
by a mental addition, it seems to us that the above difficulty vanishes.</p>

<p>Let us pass to the notion of substance and to that of cause. These
two notions are necessary to render possible the connection of phenomena
in the human mind. Our perceptions are, in fact, diverse;
if they were only diverse, and had no unity, there would be no passage
from one phenomenon to another; consciousness would arise and disappear
with each phenomenon, to arise and die anew with the next, and
so on. But then there would be no thought, for in order that thought
should exist there must be at least two different things presented to the
unity of consciousness. In other terms, we should be incapable of
perceiving a changing thing without something that was changeless.
Hence this is a necessary condition of knowledge. Now, let us see
whether this condition can be rendered objective. According to our
author it cannot, for if we subtract from surrounding things all the
phenomena that fall under the domain of the senses, what remains?
Nothing. Common-sense, indeed, believes in substance, but does not
mean thereby an abstract and metaphysical entity, it means the whole
of what strikes the senses; when the phenomenon is opposed to substance
nothing is meant but that a new phenomenon has just added itself to
preceding ones. Wood burns; here wood is the substance, combustion
the phenomenon. This is how common-sense understands the matter;
but if we separate from the idea of wood all that characterizes it as
wood, nothing remains but a pure abstraction, of which common-sense
takes no account, and has never so much as thought. Our author
further combats the idea of substance by appealing to the metaphysical
difficulties that it suggests. Is there only one substance, or are there
several? Either hypothesis is equally difficult to sustain. In other
words, substance is nothing more than that law in virtue of which the
mind connects phenomena in one and the same act of thought.</p>

<p>Here, again, we are obliged to say that the preceding arguments
against the objectivity of the notion of substance are, in our opinion,
far from conclusive. In the first place, it seems to us a false philosophical
method to exclude an object from the human mind because it
suggests difficulties that we are incapable of solving. Every object must
be presented to us as existing before we can judge of the possibility of
that object. Perhaps we do not possess the means of solving all the
questions which the existence of an object may suggest, but this is no
reason why it should not exist. The existence of things cannot be subordinated
to the limits of our understanding; it is this very principle
which seems to us soundest of all in the “Kritik” of Kant. Even
should we be for ever incapable of knowing whether there is one substance
or whether there are many, even should we be for ever doomed
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>
to doubt as to this point, it would not follow that the existence of one or
of many substances were thereby done away with. Moreover, the criticism
of our author goes much further than the imperilling the objectivity of
substance; it really bears against the very notion itself. If, in fact,
every phenomenon being withdrawn, nothing remains any longer in my
mind, it is not merely objective substance that vanishes, it is the notion
itself. What, indeed, is a notion which, analyzed, comes to naught? And
what is this necessary law which is a nonentity? Our author tells us that
if we remove all the accidents there remains “nothing perceptible to the
senses.” This is mere tautology, for it is too evident that nothing
sensible ought to remain in the notion, all sensible accidents having
been withdrawn; but what does remain is that without which phenomena
could not be connected. And this is no empty concept, for how
should an empty concept have any uniting power? And, lastly, when
the author, correcting himself, as we think, says that the notion of
substance reduces itself to what he calls a “fundamental phenomenon,”
he does nothing but change the word, and in reality reverts to what we
call substance. For in what sense does anything fundamental—that is
to say, that to which other phenomena ultimately reduce themselves,
and which cannot be reduced to any other—still preserve the name of
phenomenon? All this, therefore, is but admitting under one name
what has been denied under another.</p>

<p>The criticism of the notion of cause is quite similar to that of the
notion of substance. It is a notion necessary to the mind, for just as
without substance there can be no mental connection between simultaneous
phenomena, in the same way without cause there can be no
connection between successive phenomena. Causality is the necessary
law that connects each phenomenon with its anterior conditions. Without
this law there could be no science, no induction, no experience.
It cannot, consequently, be derived from experience, since it is the very
condition of it. But do we seek to render cause objective as well as
substance? If so, we must understand it in a different sense. Cause
is no longer merely a phenomenon anterior to another, the antecedent
of a consequent. It is something quite different, it is force, the
active power, that initiates the movement, and of which we find the type
in our own consciousness. Hence, to render cause objective is nothing
less than to spiritualize the universe, to suppose everywhere causes
similar to ours—it is a kind of universal Fetichism. And, further, we
fall into the same difficulties as we did with regard to substance. Is
there only one cause or many causes? Lastly, causation thus understood
is of no use whatever to science, for science has no need at all of
metaphysical forces, that which is necessary to science, and employed by
it under the name of force, being a measurable quantity which it
disengages from phenomena and from experience.</p>

<p>On this new ground the difficulty that confronts critical idealism is
the same as that affecting the notion of substance. It lies in defending
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>
the position against empiricism, from which are borrowed all the arguments
against the reality of the cause, while attempting, nevertheless,
to preserve the notion of it. How succeed in retaining as an <i>à priori</i>
law what empiricism declares to be only an acquired habit? How
explain a law of mind imposing a determined order on external
phenomena? How can the entirely subjective need of relation
determine phenomena to produce themselves in the order desired by our
intelligence? The thunder rolls: my mind, in virtue of an innate law,
insists on this phenomenon being connected with a certain totality of
antecedent phenomena—namely, heat, the formation of clouds charged
with electricity of different kinds, the meeting of these clouds, and the
combination of the two electricities, &amp;c. How and why have these
phenomena produced themselves in order to satisfy my mind? Our author
somewhere reproaches the partisans of innate ideas with supposing ideas
on one side and phenomena on the other. How can he exonerate Kant’s
system from this objection? No philosopher ever insisted more than he
on the opposition between matter and form, the former being, as he
says, “given <i>à posteriori</i>,” the latter ready prepared <i>à priori</i> in the
mind. No philosopher, not even Leibnitz, has more radically separated
sensibility which is passive from the understanding whose principle is
spontaneity. How do these two opposite principles happen to agree?
Even were it pointed out that our senses themselves are innate, since
our sensations are but the manifestation of the specific activity of each
one of them—light, of the optic nerve, sound, of the acoustic—it still
remains certain that our sensations are only subjective as regards their
content and not as regards their origin; they arise in virtue of causes
to us unknown. How should understanding, by aid of a purely mental
law, and in order to its own satisfaction, evoke sensible phenomena from
nothingness, and if it had such a power, it could only be in virtue of an
active force, that is, of a veritable causality? You say that you require
relation, without which there could be no knowledge. And why must
there be knowledge because you feel the need of it? And why should
there not be in the understanding a need of unity and relation that sensibility
does not satisfy? To say that the mind at the same time that
it thinks the law produces phenomena conformable to that law, is to
make the mind itself the cause in the objective and metaphysical sense
of the word—is no other than that universal spiritualism that the
author began by refuting. We are therefore very far from admitting
his criticism of the principles of causality. Let us go on to the notion
of the absolute.</p>

<p>M. Liard begins very properly by pointing out the confusion too
often made between the notion of the infinite and that of the absolute.
He says that the infinite can only be strictly understood in the mathematical
sense, but that hence, as Leibnitz has said, the true infinite is the
absolute. He admits the existence in the mind of the notion of the
absolute in so far as it is inseparable from that of the relative. The
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>
Scotch philosopher, Hamilton, had endeavoured to suppress this notion,
and had reproached Kant for not having completely exorcised the phantom
of the absolute,<a name="FNanchor_2" id="FNanchor_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>
and for having retained it in the character of <i>idea</i>
while contesting its objective existence. It is remarkable that on this
point, so decisive for metaphysics, Hamilton should have been opposed
and refuted by the more modern English philosophers, who often pass for
having pushed the critical and negative spirit further than he, when, indeed,
on this point it is just the contrary. Herbert Spencer especially is one
whom it is interesting to consult here. He maintains against Hamilton
the notion of the absolute as positive, not negative, “as the correlative
notion of the relative, as the substratum of all thoughts”—I quote
verbally—“as the most important element of our
knowledge.”<a name="FNanchor_3" id="FNanchor_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> He
also maintains in opposition to Hamilton that the affirmation of the
absolute is “a knowledge and not a belief.” Only according to him
this object that underlies all our thoughts is absolutely indeterminable
by us. We know that it <i>is</i>, not <i>what</i> it is. It is the incomprehensible,
the unknowable.</p>

<p>M. Liard seems to us substantially to admit all these conclusions.
“Existence by others,” he says, “is not to be understood without self-existence.”
“Without the spur of the notion of the absolute, how
comprehend the obstinate persistence of the human mind in transcending
the limits of the relative? Is not this a proof that the relative is
not sufficient to itself?” It is one thing to affirm the absolute, another
to determine its nature. Even granting that we be powerless to speak
as to the essence of the absolute, and that it can never be for us other than
the indeterminable and unknowable, “is it nothing to be assured of the
existence of an unknowable? At all events religious beliefs might in
default of scientific certainty find in an irremovable basis this conviction.”</p>

<p>We see therefore that our author agrees with Mr. Herbert Spencer
in granting the existence of the absolute; he does not seem to reduce it,
as Kant does, to a mere idea. He confines himself to saying that it
cannot be determined. He shows that none of the notions that have
been previously examined can fill up the concept of the absolute.
Neither space, nor time, nor substance, nor cause, nor the totality of
phenomena, can be raised to the notion of absolute. It is therefore indeterminable.
Now, as the absolute is the proper object of metaphysics,
it follows that metaphysics lack an object, having nothing to say
thereon. Hence it is self-condemned, and consequently metaphysics is
not a science.</p>

<p>Such is the conclusion of the second part. The first appeared to
raise us above phenomena by establishing the necessity of thought and
of its fundamental law. But the second confines us within the domains
of thought, and forbids us to go beyond. There is, indeed, a science of
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>
thought, but this science is criticism, not metaphysics. Have we, then,
only escaped from positivism to fall into the abyss of scepticism?</p>

<p>Before explaining in what manner the author has endeavoured to
escape from this abyss, there is room for an important remark on the
previous discussion as to the notion of the absolute. Scepticism on
this point may assume three forms. Either, first, we do not even possess
the notion of it, our notion is entirely negative,—the absolute is the non-relative,
is indeed the relative with a negation: such is the view of
Sir W. Hamilton. Or else, secondly, we have the notion of the absolute,
of being in itself and by itself, of the superlatively real being, <i>ens
realissimum</i>, as Kant expresses it, but it is only a notion, we cannot
affirm the existence: this is Kant’s doctrine. Or, thirdly, we have
indeed a positive notion of the absolute, and we necessarily affirm its
existence, only we are unable to determine its nature: this is the conclusion
arrived at by Herbert Spencer. Now, of these three doctrines
the two first alone, in our opinion, belong to what may be called criticism.
The third is manifestly a return to dogmatism. The more or
less of determination in the notion of the absolute is only the second
problem of metaphysic; the first is the existence of that absolute.
And, moreover, the doctrine of the divine incomprehensibility has
always been maintained by the greatest metaphysicians as well as the
greatest theologians. All mystics incline to it. There may therefore
be room for debate as to the more or less approximative character of
our concepts of the absolute. That any of these are adequate, or
absolutely adequate, is what no philosopher has ever thought himself
obliged to maintain. No doubt, to define the absolute as the unknowable,
is to express the doctrine under a very rigorous form, but one
could hardly refuse to allow the absolute to be the incomprehensible.</p>

<p>Consequently, then, if the author, as appears to be the case from
the passages we have quoted, thinks with Mr. Herbert Spencer that the
notion of the absolute corresponds to an existence, and if he contents
himself with maintaining its indeterminability, we may, if we like, consider
this to be a singularly attenuated metaphysic, but we are not entitled
to deny that it amounts to a departure from criticism and a return to
metaphysic. If, on the other hand, criticism does at least suppose one
fundamental datum,—thought, namely, and with the thought the thinking,—we
are still forced to grant to Descartes, and consequently to metaphysic,
the existence of the thinking subject; and hence that science which
our author declares not to be one would be found already in possession
of the claim by the single fact of what he has called the criticism of
two fundamental postulates: I think, I am—I think the absolute, the
absolute is. And is this then nothing?</p>

<p>We are therefore of opinion that M. Liard ought to have concluded
the second part of his work as he did the first—that is to say, that he
ought to have shown the insufficiency of criticism as he did that of
positivism. To our mind, criticism supposes metaphysic, as positivism
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>
supposes criticism. Metaphysic contains the reason of criticism, as
criticism does that of positivism. Instead, then, of saying that metaphysic
is not a science, we should rather call it the culminating point of
science. But in place of following this natural order, which is, indeed,
only his own method, our author has preferred to prove criticism right
in the second part of his book, and metaphysic right in the third, by a sort
of <i>saltus</i>, not contained in what goes before. He has chosen to appear
nearer to Kant than he really is; has chosen to carry on his own evolution
in Kant’s manner, and to rebuild on different bases what he had
demolished; but we shall see that this evolution is in reality quite
different from that of Kant, and that his justification of criticism is only
apparent, or at least if he defends it, this is really only in order subsequently
to undermine it.</p>

<h4>III.</h4>

<p>Kant’s evolution, which makes dogmatism to result from scepticism,
was an entirely moral evolution, substituting for speculative the
authority of practical reason. The evolution we have now to deal with
is of a quite different character; it consists in passing from objective to
subjective knowledge, from the object to the subject. Even if all that
has been just said on the side of criticism were true, there is at least
invariably one existence that remains untouched by it: this existence is
that of the thinking subject, and this existence is incontestable. What
appears to us as a circle to the circumference are objects, in the
centre is the subject. We do not confound ourselves with our sensations,
we distinguish between them and ourselves. Can, then, this
consciousness of the thinking subject be no more than the transformation
of external events? No; for all exterior events reduce themselves
to one—<i>i.e.</i>, motion; and all interior events to one—<i>i.e.</i>, thought. There
is no transition or transformation possible between one of these phenomena
and the other. “We acknowledge,” says a distinguished savant,
Professor Tyndall, “that a definite thought and a molecular action of
the brain occur simultaneously, but we do not possess the essential
organ, nor even a rudiment of the organ we should require in order to
pass by reasoning from the one to the other.” Thus, then, the subject
exists and is not reducible to the object. Shall we say that
this subject is nothing more than a sum of phenomena? But what
adds up these phenomena? A common bond is needed. Have we any
consciousness of such a bond? “Yes,” replies our author, “we call
internal states of consciousness, past, present, or possible; we attribute
them to ourselves, we say that they take place within us. What does
this mean if the <i>ego</i> to which we refer them is only their succession?
How comprehend the continuity of consciousness?” In a word, our
author admits absolutely that the <i>ego</i> has a consciousness of its own
being, as distinct from its sensations and from external objects. “It
is,” he says, “an activity constantly modified, but yet always one,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>
which dominating its states refers them to the unity of one same
consciousness.”</p>

<p>Here, then, we have, without possibility of mistake, the fundamental
doctrine of the spiritualistic philosophy of Descartes, Leibnitz,
Maine de Biran, and Jouffroy. By laying down this principle
the author believes himself enabled to reinstate that metaphysic
which criticism had condemned. We, for our part, have no doubt of
this; but we fail to see how the author can at the same time hold
this principle and the Kantian principle of idealism. The “Kritik” of
Kant bears upon the subject as well as the object; according to it both
the one and the other are unknowable and incomprehensible noumena.
The human mind is but a complex compound of sensations and categories,
the unity of which is reached by the same process as the unity of
external objects. No doubt Kant is, indeed, obliged to concede something
to the <i>ego</i>, the <i>cogito</i> as he calls it; but he does not very clearly
say what it is; it is not a substance, not a category, not a result. “It
is,” says he, “the vehicle of all categories.” What can be more vague?
The metaphor shows both how little disposed Kant was to assign its due
part to the <i>ego</i>—how vague and uncertain he left it, and at the same
time how he was forced to take it into account. The <i>ego</i>, the active,
continuous, self-conscious <i>ego</i>, is the rock ahead to Kant’s philosophy.
For how dispute the consciousness of substance and of cause, when one
admits “a continuous activity dominating all states of consciousness
and reducing them to unity?”</p>

<p>What, then, is substance, according to our author? It is, he says,
something that does not change considered as the necessary condition of
that which changes. What is cause? Is it not the power of initiating
any given movement? Now, this same consciousness which gives
us the <i>ego</i> as a continuous activity, does it not in so doing give it us as
the condition of phenomena and as the productive cause of movement
in voluntary efforts? Consequently, to grant that the <i>ego</i> knows itself
as <i>ego</i>, and as activity, is in point of fact to restore the notions of cause
and substance which had been done away with. At most all that has been
gained from criticism is the difficulty of comprehending substance and
cause without objective, that is, material form. Its results, then, amount
only to the incomprehensibility of matter. But the cause of metaphysic
is not to be confounded with that of matter; metaphysic is not tied to
the existence of materialism; and were it even led in self-defence to deny
the very existence of matter altogether, one does not see that such a
negation need cost it much. Descartes did not hesitate to place the
existence of bodies in doubt, in order to save the existence of spirit.
Malebranche did not believe that the existence of bodies could be proved
except by revelation. Leibnitz did not think that bodies were more
than phenomena, the reality of which was spiritual. There is, then, no
common cause between the interests of metaphysic, or of what Kant calls
<i>dogmatism</i>, and the question of material objectivity, which may be left
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>
open without compromising the fundamental basis of things. How,
then, can our author appear to assign the victory to criticism while in
reality depriving it of its chief support by restoring to the <i>ego</i> the
immediate consciousness of itself as a being, one, active, permanent, and
continuous? Kant may have played this game, because, in effect, outside
of criticism, he only admits moral reasons for reinstating dogmatism.
But although our author follows him too on that ground, he
nevertheless enters in point of fact upon an entirely different path
when he invokes immediate consciousness as a guarantee of the existence
and activity of the mind. These are not moral and practical, but
metaphysical reasons. Metaphysic, then, independently of morality, has
its own proper foundation, which, far from being affected by criticism, is
the very foundation of criticism itself. This foundation once admitted,
are we entitled to declare metaphysic no science? We hold that we
are not. Doubtless, if by science be meant an absolutely adequate
knowledge of the object, such as mathematics affords, metaphysic
cannot pretend to such knowledge; but we have here only a question
of degree. The perfection of a science is not the same thing as its
existence. A science is what it is by reason of the difficulties its objects
present, and the imperfections of its method; but it is science none the
less if it possesses a given object and a solid foundation. Now, such a
foundation is admitted by our author when he admits the intuition
of the <i>ego</i> by itself; and hence it is no longer a mere question of words
to refuse the name of science to the series of deductions that may be
drawn from a principle which has been admitted valid.</p>

<p>If our author grants the foundation of metaphysics by adhering to
the Cartesian principle of the immediate knowledge of the mind by
itself, he at the same time acknowledges its most elevated term by
defending the existence of an absolute perfection, a supreme type of
spirituality. “If in ourselves,” he says, “relatively perfect ideas realize
themselves in virtue of their relative perfection, why should not the
total perfection from whence they are derived exist? There is nothing
contradictory in such an absolute.” Is not this to admit the doctrine
of the perfect being as the Cartesian School has constantly expressed it?
but is it enough <i>to</i> say that the total perfection <i>may</i> exist, enough to
inquire why it should not exist? Should we not go further, and say
with Bossuet, “On the contrary, perfection is the reason of being.”
Here we are forced to allow, in the views, or at all events in the expressions
of our author, a fluctuation and uncertainty which now impel
him towards the critical, and now towards the metaphysical position,
without his arriving at a sufficiently decided conclusion. “The absolute,”
he says, “would then be the ideal of moral perfection. But by such
a definition do we not compromise its reality?” To which doubt he
replies that the “true reality is precisely the ideal.” Now, this is an
equivocal and obscure reply, demanding explanation. No doubt the
reality claimed for the perfect being is not a sensible and material
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>
reality. But there is another than material reality—there is a spiritual,
such as is manifested to us in the reality of consciousness, in the immediate
activity and intuition of our being. We may, indeed, style this
sort of existence <i>ideal</i>, in opposition to material existence; but the
expression is incorrect, for that which, properly speaking, is an ideal
existence is one merely represented to the mind when thinking of something
that no longer exists, does not yet exist, nor ever will exist. Now,
the question is, whether the moral absolute, of which we have just had
the definition given, belongs to the first or to the second of these ideals;
whether it exists for itself, or only for us, in so far as we think it, and
while we think it. For a mode of existence like this, dependent on our
own thought, is very far from being the supreme reality; it is only a
modal and subjective reality. Thus our author, we see, expresses himself
too uncertainly. Nevertheless, his own principles sufficiently
authorized him to declare himself with more precision. Indeed, we
have seen, on the one hand, that he, with Mr. Herbert Spencer, affirms
the existence of the absolute; and, on the other hand, that he acknowledges
the concept of total perfection to be in nowise contradictory.
Granting so much, must not absolute perfection be the reason of the
existence of the absolute, as relative perfection is the reason of the existence
of the relative? If, however, any choose to call that supreme
perfection the <i>Idea</i>, with Hegel—as Plato calls it the <i>Good</i>, Aristotle the
pure <i>Act</i>, Descartes the <i>Infinitely Perfect Being</i>—we have nothing to object,
so long as it be clearly understood that the <i>idea</i> shall signify the identity
of the thought and the being, and not merely a subjective conception
of the human mind.</p>

<p>To sum up: it results from what has been already said, that spite of
his powers of thought, the author has not been able to escape a certain
fluctuation between criticism and spiritualism, and has only arrived at
a contradictory compromise between the two conceptions. From criticism
he borrows the ideality of the notions of space, time, substance, cause,
and the idea of a moral absolute founded on purely moral motives.
From spiritualism he borrows the existence of the absolute as the necessary
correlative of the relative, and the consciousness of the subject
which perceives itself in its continuity as the cause of its phenomena; and,
finally, the idea of a total perfection, which may, without involving any
contradiction, have the reason of its existence in itself. These two
orders of conception are not so closely connected as they should be;
too much is conceded to criticism, too little to metaphysic; and M. Liard
inclines overmuch to give to morality the exorbitant privilege of deciding
between the two.</p>

<h4>IV.</h4>

<p>But is this equivalent to saying that we blame our author for his
enterprise, and for the attempt he has made to reconcile criticism with
dogmatism? By no means; for we are inclined to believe that this is
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>
the very aim that all metaphysic should set before itself at the present
day. How, indeed, could we possibly admit that so powerful, so lofty
an intellectual effort as that initiated by Kant, which under the name
of criticism, of subjective or objective idealism, or even of positivism,
has but been the development of his primary thought; that so prodigious
a mental movement as this should be absolutely void of meaning,
and destined to leave no trace in science? How believe that since the
days of Descartes the human intellect has gone mad? Would not this be
to express ourselves in the same way as those who, including Descartes
himself in this condemnation, have maintained that since St. Thomas
the whole course of human thought has been only one long error? Can
there be anything more contrary to the laws of the human mind than
this hypothesis of absolute truth discovered once for all, leaving no room
beside it for anything but error? And besides, what more did Kant
do than, under the form of a system (a defective form, no doubt, but
hitherto the only one known to philosophy)—what more, we ask,
did he than develop and render prominent what had been implicitly
contained in the teaching of all preceding metaphysicians? Had not
they all assigned a share in human consciousness to the subjective and
relative, and very often a larger share than we are led to think, if we
only regard their conclusions? Has there, for example, been since the
days of Plato a single metaphysician who has denied the knowledge of the
senses to be relative, and has the full scope and bearing of this principle
been accurately measured? Can that be denied which has been
scientifically demonstrated, which Descartes already affirmed, <i>i.e.</i>,
that light and sound—Nature’s two great languages—are only
the products of our physical organization, and that outside of
the eye that sees, and the ear that hears, there is nothing external
to us but a series of vibrations and undulations, which are
neither luminous nor sonorous? Reduced to itself, without the presence
of men or animals, matter is merely darkness and silence! What sort
of matter may this be, and how little resembling the one we know?
But is not, it may be said, the reality of that matter attested at least
by resistance, by impact? The reality—yes; but is the very nature of
the external thing, as it is in itself, manifested thereby? What is
impact, what is resistance, if not a mode of our sensations? To be assured
of this, we have but to turn to all that metaphysicians teach us as to the
nature of God. All agree in saying that God has no sensations. If God be
cognizant of matter, as is indubitable, it follows that He does not know it
through sensations similar to ours. The <i>argumentum baculinum</i> which
appears so convincing to Sganarelle, would be powerless with regard to
a pure spirit, still more an infinite spirit. Now is not this as much as to
say that impact is the mode of action bodies exercise on each other, and
by which sentient beings are made aware of their existence, but that it
is a mode purely relative to the sensibility of finite beings? Say that, we at
least admit with Descartes the reality of extension. But what is the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>
real size of the extended things by which we are surrounded, and
which according to the shape of our lenses we see enlarged, diminished,
or even distorted in a thousand ways? Were it to please God, as Leibnitz
has said, to collect the immensity of worlds into a walnut-shell, while
preserving the proportion of objects, we should never find it out; and
such diminution might be carried on infinitely, without ever reaching any
term of smallness. ‘We grant it,’ will be the reply—‘all sensible knowledge
is relative; Plato, Malebranche, Leibnitz, have sufficiently told us
this; but above the senses there is the understanding, which alone is
made for truth. Our senses give us the appearance of things, our
understanding makes us see them as they are in themselves.’ Nothing
more true, and this is the basis of metaphysics. But the question is, to
what point the understanding is separated and separable from sensibility,
and reciprocally, to what point sensibility enters into the understanding.
Is there anything in us which can really be called understanding pure?
Understanding—yes; but pure—no! Man cannot think without images,
says Aristotle; this alone demonstrates that our understanding is always
obliged to sensibilize its most abstract concepts. Moreover, between
pure concepts and the data of sensibility there is still a debatable and
obscure region—that, namely, of space and time. And here it is that Kant
has made his mark ineffaceably. It is by so doing that he renovated
metaphysics. He believed, thought, that both these domains belonged to
sensibility and not to intelligence, that they too were only modes of
representation—that is to say, modes purely relative to the nature of our
mind. On this point also traditional metaphysics came to his support,
at least as regards time. For is it not said by all schools whatever that
God is not in time, that He is an eternal <i>Now</i>, that past and future
are nothing to Him? Is it not this conception which is constantly appealed
to as affording the solution of the conflict between divine prescience
and human liberty? Now to affirm that God is not in time, and
that He sees all portions of time in one sole and eternal present, is not
this as much as to say that time is only the mode of representation of
finite beings with regard to themselves; that, consequently, it is an image
belonging to their finitude, but not to what they are in themselves, since
God, who must see them as they are, sees them in an absolutely and radically
different manner? Let us add another difference between the human and
divine intelligence, pointed out by Bossuet, when he said, “We see things
because they are, but they are because God sees them.” Therefore in
God intelligence is anterior to things, in us posterior. Now, though we
can, through artistic creation, form some idea of an intelligence
anterior to things, the analogy is, after all, a coarse one, since in
us creative imagination only deals with materials borrowed from
without. Hence it follows that our intelligence is but a very
imperfect image of the divine. Now, as the latter alone can be
the type of veritable intelligence, we can only attribute to ourselves a
relative intelligence, subordinated to the conditions of the creature. But
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>
does not this amount precisely to saying that we only see things in a
subjective and human manner, and that, consequently, we do not know
them as they are in themselves? Let us go further still; let us raise
ourselves to conceptions of the perfect being, the divine being. Here,
too, all metaphysicians agree in acknowledging that we have only an
entirely relative view of the Divinity. Is there one who admits that
we can, without anthropomorphism, understand literally all the
attributes that we impute to the Deity? Has not God Himself defined
Himself in Scripture as <i>Deus absconditus</i>, and does not the doctrine of
mysteries in every great religion imply that the true essence of the
Deity is unknown to us, and that, consequently, the philosophic
doctrine of the attributes of God is a purely human conception, by
which we strive to represent to ourselves the unrepresentable, and to
bring within the grasp of our sensibility and our imagination the
august and sublime notion that confounds all created substance?</p>

<p>This is what we are taught by all metaphysic doctrine whatever, and not
only by that of Kant, Plato, St. Augustine, St. Thomas, Descartes, Malebranche,
Leibnitz, Fénelon: all alike teach us that the senses are but a
confused and relative knowledge, that space and time are modes of
finite existence, that God can only be conceived of by analogy, and not
in His essence. Are such conceptions as these very different from those
of Kant? And if he has taken them up again under another form,
if by isolating he has exaggerated them, his is the merit of having
brought them into prominence, of reminding us of them, and
forcing us to assign them a more important place in our doctrines.
Despite the warnings of the greatest minds, and of all great minds, are
we not ceaselessly tempted to yield to the automatic instinct which
makes us believe things to be as we see them, makes us suppose
the existence of a matter, solid, coloured, sonorous, cold, or hot, such
as the senses acquaint us with; makes us believe in an absolute space
and time, with which we no longer know how to deal when we think of
the true Absolute; makes us conceive of this true Absolute or Goodness
as of a species of great man, that we strip of a body, without even
reflecting whether we have really the power of representing to ourselves
anything absolutely incorporeal? It is against this vulgar current dogmatism,
which philosophy has so much trouble in getting rid of, that not
only Kant, but every metaphysician, protests. Kant only expounded,
under a rigorous and systematic form, all the critical portion of previous
metaphysics. To us it seems impossible—with more or less reservation,
and without insisting at present too rigidly on the share of the relative
and subjective in human knowledge—impossible, we say, not to allow
this share, and consequently, in a certain measure, not to give in our
adherence to transcendental criticism and idealism. There is, however,
as we have seen above, something which escapes from this relativity of
all human knowledge: it is the very fact of knowing. This fact has
in itself something absolute. I know not whence it comes, I cannot
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>
explain it; I marvel that a being should be met with in whom at one
time or other what we call knowledge has appeared; but this fact
cannot exist without being known by the knower. All knowledge
supposes, then, a subject that knows itself—that is to say, who is
internally present to himself. Here knowledge comes from within, not
from without. Whatever is objective can only <i>appear</i> to me, and is
consequently a <i>phenomenon</i>. I only see its outside, and it is only in relation
to myself that I can grasp even that outside. But the conscious <i>ego</i>
sees itself from within. Shall we say that it appears to itself? I am
willing to say so, but as it appears to itself that appearance is a reality,
for the form that I give it is my own form. In order that it should
become <i>me</i>, <i>I</i> must be <i>me</i>. Every other object has to be given in the
first instance before it is perceived; in order that I should see a house,
a house must be there. It is not so with the <i>ego</i>. For if at the
moment it is given me it is not already me, how is it to become so?
How shall I know it as such? And if it be already me, it is already
perceived as such. Hence it follows that the external thing may be
represented without being, as happens in sleep, while I cannot think
without thinking myself, or think myself without existing. All subjectivism,
all relativism, all criticism, therefore, are baffled in presence
of the <i>ego</i>.</p>

<p>It is from this solid and immovable foundation laid by Descartes at
the entrance of science that we may set out to extend the sphere of our
knowledge. Everything, it is said, is relative. What matter if that
relative be connected by precise and fixed relations with the unknown,
if that which is given be a strictly faithful projection of that which is
thought? For instance, we do not know the souls of other men in
themselves, we have never seen a soul such as it is in itself; those even
which are dearest to us are unknown like the rest. But if we suppose
all the signs by which they manifest themselves to be sincere, is it not
to know them truly and in the only way intelligible to us, to hear their
voices, and understand their words, and interpret their actions? No
doubt nothing external to ourselves can be known internally by us;
but if the exterior be the expression of the interior, is not the one the
equivalent of the other? And to ask more would amount to asking to
be more than man. Science teaches us that all appearances have a
fixed and precise relation to reality. The visible apparent sky is strictly
what it ought to be to express the real sky. The deeper our knowledge
of things goes, the more we see the perfect conformity of the apparent
to the real, the more faithfully do phenomena translate noumena. Are
we not, therefore, justified in supposing that these relative noumena,
which are still no more than appearances, could be translated in their
turn, if only we had the key to them, into other noumena of which
they are the form and image? I may say the same about the anthropomorphic
representations of Deity. I admit that the Absolute is in its
essence above all human representations. But these representations,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>
when we disengage them as much as possible from all sensible elements,
are none the less the true expression of that incomprehensible essence
in so far as it appears to a human consciousness. If not God in Himself,
it is God in relation to me; and it is with only this last that we have to
do so long as we are but men.</p>

<p>We do not, therefore, consider it impossible to assign to the critical
element its part in metaphysic without denying the objective reality
of knowledge. We think that the famous old distinction between
being and phenomena, the intelligible and the sensible, still endures,
despite the “Kritik” of Kant; or rather, this very “Kritik” itself is, in
our eyes, only a hyperbolical but striking manner of expressing this
great truth.</p>

<p class="author"><span class="smcap">Paul Janet.</span></p>

<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1" id="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a>
We already endeavoured to make this philosophy known at its earliest appearance,
by an article that appeared in the <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i> of the 19th October, 1873,
under the title, “A New Phase of Spiritualism.” We are now dealing with the most recent
form of this new school.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2" id="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a>
Hamilton’s “Discussions: Cousin, Schelling.”</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3" id="Footnote_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a>
Herbert Spencer’s “First Principles,” First Part p. 18.</p></div>
</div>

<hr />

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span></p>

<h2>ON THE MORAL LIMITS OF BENEFICIAL COMMERCE.</h2>

<p>When a Professor of <i>Political Economy</i> was first established in the
University of Oxford, a controversy presently arose in the
academical common rooms concerning the just meaning of the phrase.
Among elder and conservative men, the most active-minded insisted
that it ought to receive the full width of meaning attached to it by
Aristotle in his Treatise on Economy, which, with him, was essentially
the economy of the State—that is, in pure Greek, <i>political</i> economy,
although this epithet is not annexed to his title. By this interpretation,
the science naturally and necessarily became implicated with moral considerations,
which never can be excluded from the statesman’s view.
But the actual students and professors of the new science—eminently
Mr. Nassau Senior and Dr. Whately, shortly afterwards Archbishop of
Dublin—naturally feared that by such an interpretation political
economy would become confounded with politics; would, indeed, cease
to be a science; and by so great an enlargement of its area, would fail
to receive that special and definite cultivation which Adam Smith had
bestowed on it, as the theory of national wealth. Whately indeed, to
avoid this inconvenient extension of the sense, proposed to call the
topic, not political economy, but <i>Catallactics</i>—that is, the science of exchanges.
Excellent in many respects as the last title was, it might
have seemed to exclude the whole doctrine of taxation, and still more
decisively all discussion of Malthus’s theory of population, which belongs
to politics or to morals, not at all to the doctrine of exchange. In the
end, the economists ruled that their science does not at all teach what
<i>ought</i> to be, but simply what <i>is</i>, what <i>goes on</i>, and <i>will go on</i>, as an
inevitable result of individuals holding exchangeable right in definite
articles. Thus they seemed to have driven moral considerations out of
their science, as much as out of gardening or medicine. To call their
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>
political economy, on that account, <i>heartless</i> (as so many have done)
may seem ridiculous; but this form of attack on it arose from a perception
or belief that its professors were claiming for it an <i>imperative</i> force,
while disclaiming morality, and were assuming that it was a sufficient
and supreme rule for political action.</p>

<p>Of late it has been maintained on a special ground that moral considerations
cannot wholly be excluded from political economy. Dr.
W. B. Hodgson, first holder of a new chair in Edinburgh as Professor of
<i>Mercantile</i> Economy, has urged that, in so far as morality or immorality
in individuals affects wealth and the markets, we do not exhaust the
discussion on exchanges while we neglect this consideration. Perhaps
indeed no one, in discussing taxation, has omitted to consider what
taxes lead to fraudulent evasion or to smuggling; but economists
hitherto, with great unanimity, have resolved that, in their character of
economists, they will not notice moral evils from an opium trade,
or from sale of deadly weapons and ammunition, or from traffic
in intoxicants; nor can one in general discover from their writings that
they know vice to be wasteful, or national expenditure on needless and
foolish objects undesirable. They have a right to select what topics
they will treat, and what they will not treat. They have a right to
say: “Such and such considerations belong to morals, not to <i>our</i>
political economy.” But, on the one hand, if they are resolved that
their science shall be as unmoral as engineering or navigation, they
must not claim for it any decisive weight in State-politics; on the other
hand, the topics which they neglect need, so much the more urgently,
to be treated by others, especially since we have no professors of
practical morals, and (for more reasons than one) questions of the
market are not thought suitable to the pulpit.</p>

<p>That an exchange of one thing for another does, on the whole, <i>please</i>
both parties to the exchange, is evidently testified by the fact that each
acts voluntarily; hence, the inference is too lightly made that each is
<i>benefited</i> by the transaction. Not only so, but from an increasing
magnitude of exchanges increase of wealth is inferred, without any
reference to the nature of the things exchanged. In a rough estimate,
this reasoning has, no doubt, a <i>primâ facie</i> weight, for we may not
dictate to the tastes of others, nor assume that tastes which are not
ours are therefore silly. Yet, evidently things which perish in the
using quickly cease to be wealth, and things which are not likely to be
approved continuously cannot long command the same high price.
No article could fetch a price at all if it were not intended to be
enjoyed, used, or consumed; the final purchase is called expenditure,
and all expenditure is liable to moral judgment, approving or censuring.
When we censure expenditure, not merely because it is excessive, but
because it is essentially foolish or evil, we necessarily deplore and
deprecate the traffic which feeds it—the traffic which it encourages;
hence, some vicious trades are even forbidden by law. Short of this,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>
there is necessarily a large margin of trades which law does not, and
perhaps cannot successfully, forbid, which nevertheless may be justly
regretted, censured, and, as far as may be, discountenanced. Economists
are not here blamed if they (disowning moral considerations) do nothing
of the kind; but they must not be allowed to blind us to the fact that
some trades, not forbidden by law, are so far from promoting wealth and
weal as to be gravely pernicious. To rejoice in their magnitude, to
announce it triumphantly as a proof of national prosperity, is something
worse than a mistake.</p>

<p>No reader, it is believed, will complain that the last sentence is
mysterious or obscure. Our manufacturers of cotton and woollen have
of late loudly deplored the falling off of their home trade, while the
consumption of intoxicating drink continues to increase. They believe
that if the labouring classes spent less on the brewer and distiller, they
would spend more on the clothier. The most fanatical devotee of
alcohol cannot deny that too much of it is drunk, in face of the long-continued
avowal of the judges that drink is by far the greatest cause
of crime—drink, short of evident and provable drunkenness. Indeed,
it is not from those who are outright drunk, but from those who have
been drinking, that the worst and most numerous outrages come, while
the foot and the eye are steady, though the brain and the passions are
perverted. To boast and rejoice in the magnitude of the drink traffic,
legal as it undoubtedly is, has no moral defence. The topic is here
adduced, not in order to push that argument further, but in order to
insist that the mere increase of a trade does not <i>in itself</i> denote an increase
of wealth; is not <i>in itself</i> necessarily a thing to be applauded
either by the economist or by the moralist. In each case we must look
into detail, and consider whether this or that prosperous trade, like a
huge weed in a garden, dwarfs or kills other growths, which, but for it,
might thrive.</p>

<p>An avowed ardent disciple of Mr. Cobden—a gentleman in some
eminence of place and rank—has recently dissuaded taxes on wine and
tobacco for the sake of revenue, <i>not</i> on the ground which one might
expect—viz., that a Government ought not to base a revenue on what
may chance to be public vice, <i>but</i> on the ground that “the grower of
wine in France and of tobacco in America” can reasonably refuse to
trade with us, if “we will not accept payment in <i>the only coin</i> which
he has to offer—namely, in his wine or his
tobacco.”<a name="FNanchor_4" id="FNanchor_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> As if we were
not competent to reply: “Of wine and tobacco we quickly get more
than enough. Preserve your grapes in sawdust, or make them into
raisins, and you will not find our people averse to enjoy them, nor
will you encounter any unreasonable duty from our Custom-houses.
As to tobacco, surely the rich land which alone can raise it, can raise
no end of other products which we are certain to value.” This well-informed
writer, in his whole argument, seems to account wine the only
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>
food-product which we receive from France (to silks and elegant
articles he once slightly alludes); but he cannot be ignorant that the
solid food which France sends us in eggs, cheese, butter, vegetables,
chickens, and dry fruit is enormous; she would in ordinary years send
us wheat, did not America, Russia, and Australia make it needless.
To speak of wine as <i>the only coin</i> of France is a wonderful straining
of argument. But the reason for quoting it here is to illustrate how
completely the School of Cobden wishes the State to ignore moral considerations
in trade. Yet the State deserves no reverence, if it be not
moral. Laws and enactments, framed by minds reckless of morality,
are apt to be, on the one side unjust and oppressive, on the other
eminently corrupting. A State which gains revenue from a vicious
trade, such as gambling and debauchery, demoralizes its people so
effectually as to deserve reprobation rather than reverence. According
to the ancients, the lawgiver begins to civilize society and to earn veneration
by establishing marriage and sanctifying the family. Are we
to say, “We have changed all that now; let the Church care for
morality: it is no concern of the State?” Who first taught such
sentiment as wise policy, it is not easy to say; but it certainly has, in
practice, if not in theory, attained a deadly currency. It never was
the doctrine of Adam Smith. It is obviously a sure road to ruin, if
its development be unopposed.</p>

<p>A legislator, of course, ought not to guide his enactments by the
morality of any one school. If, in Greek fashion, we were to set up an
Epimenides, a Solon, a Lycurgus, as plenipotentiary to start us in a
new course, there might be some little danger of one-sided and conceited
morals; yet not much, even so; for a very one-sided or very stupid
man would hardly be elected: every lawgiver wishes his new institutions
to be permanent, and is sure to have some regard to the friction which
they would encounter in working. But where the legislation must have
sanction, not from one man, but from a thousand men, of whom six
hundred are elected from different circles of mixed ranks, from diverse
localities, where forms and schools of religion, based on variety of
thought, prevail, it is evidently impossible that in the laws collectively
approved any moral ideas should dominate, except those which are
common to all who are morally cultivated. To dread moral considerations
in the debates of an English Parliament, lest the morality prevailing
in its laws become one-sided and arbitrary, pedantic and ascetic,
is so baseless, so wanting in good sense, as scarcely to seem sincere.
When people tell us, “We shall be liable to have laws against dancing
and cardplaying, or laws compelling us to go to church, if we insist that
legislation ought to study for the public virtue,” they not only make
themselves ridiculous, they even force us to suspect that they fear lest
vice be repressed in ways inconvenient to the vicious. So much is premised,
lest it be imagined or pretended that in pointing at moral
limits to beneficial commerce any morality is desired less broad than
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>
that which all noble and well-reputed schools accept—the morals of
mankind. At the same time, what is here advanced is intended to
bear less immediately on law than on the general tenor of public opinion
and practical writing.</p>

<p>Many economists write, as assuming that it is a step forward in civilization
when a barbarous people learns artificial wants. If a New
Zealander, instead of being satisfied with a mat for his back, which,
made by himself, will last him for years, betakes himself to an English
coat, which he must buy with a price,—which indeed less effectually shields
him from wet, and sooner wears out,—he does that which is convenient
to the English trader, but to him is a very doubtful gain: perhaps
rather he brings on himself colds, cough, and consumption. If a
thousand Maoris did the same, the commerce might figure in a Maori
budget, and a Maori economist might point to the new trade as a step
forward in national prosperity. The Zulus, as described by Englishmen
who have travelled in Zululand or lived in the midst of them in Natal, are
an upright, generous, faithful, honest race; and strange to say, Englishmen,
who have such experience of them, are found to corroborate the
utterance of Cetewayo, “A Zulu trained by a missionary is a Zulu
spoiled”—that is, when trained in our habits they lose their national
virtues. How can this be? why should it be? Apparently, because
from us they learn artificial wants. While an apron suffices a Zulu for
clothing, and a very simple hut for shelter, he can in many ways afford
to be hospitable and generous. A man with very few wants has all
the feelings of superfluity and wealth while surrounded by possessions
so slender that we count him very poor: and when with an amount of
toil which to his hardihood is not at all severe, he can always calculate
on providing for himself and family all that their simple habits need, he
is not deterred from present generosity by studying for his own future.
But if he learn to covet and count necessary a number of articles
which require from him threefold labour, he feels himself no longer rich,
but poor; then, instead of giving small favours gratuitously, he claims
to be paid for everything; instead of being princely, he becomes mercenary
and stingy. If he imitate the dress, he is liable to envy the
wealth of the Englishman, and in schemes of laying up for the future
he easily becomes avaricious, perhaps fraudulent. Such are the steps
by which one may justly calculate that some or many barbarians
degenerate from the normal goodness of their fellows. The artificial
wants which they learn when housed with our missionaries, or imbibe
from the crafty allurements of traders, are not (<i>primâ facie</i>) a benefit at
all, do not conduce to independence, to the sense of wealth, nor to the
practice of virtue. They are simply a convenience to the European trader.
If a Maori or Zulu chief frown upon such trade, which judgment does he
deserve—to be scolded as barbarous, or to be praised as sagacious? With
them, perhaps also with us, to account but few things necessary is a
foundation for many virtues. Our economists often reverse the picture.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span></p>

<p>No stress is here laid on the fact that the historical saints of
Christendom thought it an excellence to be satisfied with a minimum
of external appliances for the comfort of the body. So much of
arbitrary opinion may be imputed reasonably to them, and so much of
fancy and credulity to their biographers, that it does not occur to the
present writer to account their practices or principles any support to
his argument. But the case of Socrates, and many other Greek
philosophers, is different, and much to the point. With them, high
thought, cheap feeding, and mean circumstantials frequently went
together; and perhaps even those philosophers, who were somewhat
mercenary and rich, would vehemently have renounced the idea that
it is a good thing to acquire habits and tastes which make necessary to
us things previously needless. But there is danger of drawing the
reader’s thoughts into a new channel by this allusion to Greek philosophers
when an argument of national economy is chiefly intended, not
of personal virtues. As it is better for an individual to be satisfied
with supplies that are sufficient, close at hand, and easy of attainment,
than to have fastidious tastes which cannot be supplied without considerable
effort and labour, so it is better for a nation to have a taste
for its native products, so far as our lower wants are concerned. If we
can get all that the health and strength of the body needs from our
own soil, and with small expenditure, this is better for us than to be
enslaved to artificial tastes, which multiply labours for mere bodily
supply. To fix ideas, let me illustrate the principle here contained by
discussing those popular beverages, tea and coffee.</p>

<p>Tea undoubtedly, as superseding beer, cider, and wine, has wrought
much benefit to England, even if it have been (when heavily taxed)
dearer than our native intoxicants. When taken with little food, in
strong and frequent cups, it may often have weakened the nerves; but
it does not, like alcohol, pervert the brain and inflame the mind, thus
leading to folly, vice, and crime. The present writer is, and always
has been, a tea drinker; nor have the many assaults on this beverage
which have been sent to him shaken his belief that, taken in moderation,
it has no evil comparable to its good. The present argument does not
aim to prove that tea is in itself bad, only that the too-exclusive addiction
to it has hurtfully excluded the trial of native beverages, which
are perhaps better, certainly cheaper, and far more accessible.</p>

<p>Rigid enemies of alcoholic drink often assure us, in poetical and
ecstatic language, that water is the only reasonable and right drink for
man, as for other animals; but the water which they recommend and
describe as gushing and sparkling in mountain rills does not come
to the hearth and home of every mountain dweller, much less is it
attainable by the inhabitants of cities or boggy plains. The hardy
beasts of the field, if they can get the water pure, manage to endure
its coldness in all seasons; so perhaps might we, if we could recover
robustness of the stomach without losing any advantage of a developed
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>
brain. That such recovery is impossible is not here asserted, but
simply that, under the existing circumstances, the water (through its
impurities or its coldness) often needs to be cooked, to be warmed, to
have then some taste superadded which shall overcome mawkishness.
When this is conceded, the question arises, will no native botany suffice?
Are we of necessity driven to import tea from China or Assam? Such are
the wonderful and deep harmonies of Nature that in each long-inhabited
country the constitution of animals becomes adapted to its plants as well
as to its climate, and finds among them not only its food, but its remedies
for disease. Native herbs are often found more health-restoring than
pretentious foreign drugs; nor is it extravagant to imagine that native
leaves and berries might adapt themselves as well to the palate of
Englishmen as tea and coffee, and better to their stomachs, if, instead
of buying from the foreigner, we had duly studied our home resources.
In the case of coffee, it curiously happens that there are persons
among us who prefer what is called dandelion coffee to the coffee of
Arabia; and that the preference is sincere seems proved by the accident
that the dandelion thus prepared is dearer than the best Mocha. Nor
does this dearness weigh against our argument. Twenty years ago
brown bread was charged by bakers as fancy bread; ten years ago
lentils were double their present price; in each case because the demand
was so uncertain. The price of dandelion would quickly come down if
it were in large and daily request. As substitutes for tea many leaves
may be named which will not be called simply medicinal, prominently
those of the sweet bay, the peach, and the black currant. If we were
by any cause cut off from tropical markets, some combination would
soon be discovered which carried off public preference; and when a
national taste in it had once been established, every good purpose
would have been attained without the foreign article. Should we
not in that case moralize with wonder over the vast apparatus of great
ships, which had been built, and manned, and stored, and sent
to sea, with loss of sailors’ lives, entailing widowhood and orphanhood,
for no better reason than to bring back leaves, for which adequate substitutes
abound at home? This argument undertakes not to prove, but
to illustrate. It is not specially confined to the case of tea or coffee.
It does not make positive assertion that we can now change the
English taste, nor does it urge a transition which would be violent, if
at all sudden. It merely points to reasonable probabilities, as showing
that a vast trade with a distant country to gratify an artificial want, if
it prove how much we can afford to spend without being ruined, yet
does not at all prove that we enrich ourselves by the exchange. At the
same time, so great is the facility for making drinks, that we might
assume higher ground and press our argument farther. The deliciousness
of Oriental sherbet is no matter of doubt or controversy. Its basis
is simply barley-water; to flavour it, the foreigner, of course, uses some
of his own fruits, but we have plenty of substitutes at hand, at least
while sugar abounds to us. It may be warmed, if necessary: so little
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>
need we depend on the Chinese. Besides, some among us are satisfied
with, and warmly applaud, the drink prepared from simple oatmeal. If
we all had this taste, we should nationally be richer.</p>

<p>It may be retorted, “Did you not name <i>Sugar</i>? Do you advocate
making sugar of beetroot?” But no general renunciation of foreign
commerce is for a moment here suggested as expedient. While we
can bring sugar made from cane, and save our lands for other uses than
beetroot, we presume this commerce to conduce to wealth. Not but
that we may suspect the cheapness of sugar to conspire with other
causes in slackening our zeal for <i>Honey</i>. Bees do not occupy and use
up arable land. An abundance of cottage gardens and little rockeries
satisfy them. Their depredations do not lessen the sweetness of flowers,
nor the savour of herbs. They add to our wealth, at very small expense.
They greatly add to the fertilization of plants. By all means let us
get from the foreigner what we need; only let us not therefore
neglect and forget our native resources.</p>

<p>In other and greater matters a like topic recurs. When the controversy
against the Corn Laws was at its height, the advocates of
repeal were taunted with wishing to explode native wheat. They
replied, “Wheat is now largely sown in England where the climate or
soil is unfavourable; in such fields only, the culture will be discouraged;
where it can be produced and ripened with greater certainty it will still
be grown, and the price will no longer be forced up; the lands less
suited to wheat may well yield, either some other grain in rotation, or
other needful crop.” Valid as this reply seemed, grand and glorious as
are the results of opening our ports to foreign corn, the retrospect of
thirty years nevertheless suggests new lines of thought. Want of food
in Ireland when the potato crop failed was the argument which converted
Sir Robert Peel; but the desire of selling cotton and woollen
fabrics, or hardware, to those whose “chief coin” was wheat, gave an
earlier impetus to the Anti-Corn Law League. Cobden and his associates
were in the right, and performed well the task of the day; but
the existing state of our agriculture is now discerned to be highly
unsatisfactory. Every year widens and deepens the conviction that our
laws of Land Tenure are fundamentally wrong; indeed, they are diverse
from those of all the world; if they are not signally better than those
of all other nations, they are gravely and lamentably worse; and the
idea now presents itself, that the temporary relief given to us by
the free importation of wheat has proved a buttress to an evil
system of land laws, and has blinded us to the essential evils contingent
on a perpetual increasing ratio of the population in great towns to that
of the rustic districts. Much wealthier, no doubt, we are, and our
poorer classes are less hard-worked. To dwell on the drawbacks through
higher expectations, artificial wants, higher prices of coal, bricks, and
houses—not to mention worse matters—might lead into too long digression.
But, to bring out the idea here pointed at, we may speculate as
to the results which must have followed, if no foreign markets had been
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>
able to give us permanent supplies of necessary food. Suppose that
barely we had been able in 1847 to save from starvation as many poor
Irishmen as we did save, but that in succeeding years the United
Kingdom had been cast on its own resources for grain and cattle; will
any one maintain that by a proper use of the land we could not have
fed our own population?</p>

<p>If any one is of that opinion, let him consider the phenomena of
French agriculture. A century ago France seemed unable to feed her
inhabitants. Thousands of the population died of starvation, even the
king’s own servants. Misery among the peasants and the poorer
classes in towns was universal. No one imagined that the country
could afford to export food, or had any idea of its vast capacity of production.
Her climate is not now superior to what it was; her area is
somewhat enlarged by the sagacious plantings on dunes of sand; the
soil is improved by a century’s tillage; the produce is more valuable,
because the peasants have been taught many secrets of fruit culture.
Most important of all, millions of peasants are owners of small freeholds.
The “magic of property” has made them industrious, saving and ever
vigilant to increase and improve the crops. We in England censure
and deplore the compulsion on a French parent to divide his petty freehold
and his gains equally among his children. If this be a grave evil,
yet so much the more remarkable are the marvellous results of the
union in one man of landlord, farmer, and labourer: for we see that by
the universal and untiring industry which this fact elicits, not only
were the great extravagances of the Second Empire and its wars
sustained, but, in spite of the scarcely calculable losses of the Franco-German
war, the fine of two hundred and fifty millions sterling, which
France had to pay, was paid within four or five years, while a larger
army than ever was raised and maintained. No one can dispute that
the unexampled buoyancy of French finance is due mainly to the sound
conditions of French landed tenure. Ireland, Scotland, and England all
await a similar development, and never can be satisfied without it: but
we have postponed the day of necessary reform by buying our food of
almost every kind, in dangerous amount, from foreign countries, while
our own arable land goes back into grass and pasture.</p>

<p>And what reply does the Right Hon. John Bright make, when
addressed with a claim of reformed landed tenure? His name is here
adduced for honour, as an eminent type of the Cobden School; but the
habitual reply is, “Good! we are in favour of Free Trade in land:”
as though Free Trade were in itself a charm which can scare away all
evils; as though the existing freedom to accumulate land to any extent
by purchase were not one of our greatest mischiefs. Men cannot live
in the air. Land for a dwelling is as essential as air and water.
Land is very limited in quantity, especially land conveniently situated,
with favourable conditions. Land primitively belongs to a nation, and
no man naturally has any right to more of it than he can himself cultivate
and use. Large landed estates are a vast power, social and political.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>
Their possession was originally in England an official trust, coupled with
political duties and customary dues in payment: but without right of
ejectment while those dues were paid. The commercial idea of land is
a perversion and abuse. Those who fancy that the abolition of entails
and primogeniture and whatever makes conveyances expensive, will bring
about the desirable reform, boast that their remedy will hoist up the
market price of land; in other words, it would make an effective purchase
by the State more and more difficult, more and more burdensome
to the community. Nay, it might even delay the necessary reform,
until the patience of a nation under a landlord Parliament broke down,
and such a revolution followed as that of France under Louis XVI.
As there is a moral limit to the magnitude of beneficial commerce with
the foreigner, much more is there a moral limit to the beneficial magnitude
of landed estates. Happily some despots are philanthropic; yet
we are not in love with despotism. Some great landowners are philanthropic:
higher honour be to them! but we must calculate that very
many will covet power over all who reside on the estate, and will use the
power not always kindly; or will employ it as a political engine to win
state-offices and salaries for their families; others, more directly and unblushingly
mercenary, will think chiefly how to raise rent, and will forbid
both crops and inhabitants, if wealthy lovers of occasional sport outbid
ordinary farmers. If from mere pride and love of the romantic a landlord
make his estate a wilderness, the nation still suffers the damage.
Its population is cooped into towns or driven into exile, its markets are
starved, its military force is lowered. While the Cobden School pertinaciously
connives at these great evils, and juggles with the phrase “Free
Trade” as if land were an article which ought to be on the same footing as
moveables, they are playing into the hands of their nominal adversaries.</p>

<p>The first measure which we need is not one which shall facilitate the
purchase of new and new estates by the over-wealthy, who, if they are
not gamblers or otherwise vicious, often know not what to do with their
vast incomes; but much rather a measure which shall set a maximum
area for estates. The mildest thing to do is, not in the first instance
to pass any new <i>Act</i>, but only a resolution or <i>Vote</i> of the Commons,
declaring that it is against the public interest for any individual to
possess more than a thousand acres of rustic land, or more than five
acres of town land; and that whoever bequeaths to one person more
than the above-named, ought to be subjected to a heavy and special
land tax. In the same direction we need other special votes of the
House, to the effect—that by legislation, by purchase, and by taxation
the recovery of the national soil for the nation from year to year ought
to be systematically pursued, wherever now held in large masses by
bodies of men or by individuals; and that in order to give to cultivators
the full results of their own industry, it is expedient that the State, out of
its own present or future domains, carve out numerous small farms to
be held under it as by copyright tenure, not subject to rise of rent.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>
Space does not permit further detail, or reply to objections; but the
idea intended is to work in the direction of <i>virtual</i> freeholds, ever
increasing in number, which cannot be bought out of the hands of the
cultivators by tempting prices from the rich, because they are legally
State property, and destined to remain as areas of small culture. By
buying up from time to time the lands possessed by large charities, by
legacy taxes directed to discourage bequests of land in great mass, and
by direct purchases of land or rather by taking the legacy tax in land
itself, the State would beneficently in the course of many generations
undo the injustices and frauds of the past.</p>

<p>Land is so far from being a desirable object of unlimited commerce
(called by the Cobden School Free Trade), that, especially under the
modern interpretation which makes the lord (or chief man) <i>owner</i> of the
land, the most jealous limitations ought to be imposed on it by the
State. So long, indeed, as a man holds no more of it than one family
can cultivate, jealousy is needless; for the holder (especially if he pay a
quit-rent for it) is sure to cultivate it, and cannot offend by excluding
population. Town land ought, as soon as possible, to become town
property; and, meanwhile, as early as possible, all town building to be
subjected to a public veto for sanitary reasons. To make away into
mercenary hands, as an article of trade, the whole solid area on which
a nation lives, is astonishing as an idea of statesmanship. There is
another matter connected with land as to which the State may justly
feel great jealousy—namely, as to the consumption and exportation of
material which cannot be reproduced. It is said that Sicily, under the
Romans first, was largely deteriorated by the perpetual exportation of
corn, exhausting even very fertile soil. Ireland in the past may have
suffered by the constant sending out of cattle and pigs, with no back-current
of commerce to restore all that their bones and flesh took out
of the earth. Virginia and other States of the American Union largely
ruined their soil by unceasing exportation of tobacco and other products.
But to come closer home, no crops of coal can be grown in England
and Wales. We reap where we have not sown, where we cannot sow.
We export in enormous mass what we cannot reproduce. We allow
individuals to become, out and out, proprietors of the national coal, and
then sanction their unlimited exportation of it, with the high probability
that this may cripple industry in the near future of England. This
surely is a commerce, the benefit of which is very doubtful even in a
cosmopolitan view. It may seem better to stimulate other nations to
search for coal on their own soil than to use up what we cannot replace.
And as for some other articles of immense commerce, as tobacco, it may seem
doubtful which nation loses more by it—the importers or the exporters.
Surely in all these cases the quality of the things bought and sold must
be considered carefully, before we regard the magnitude of any trade a
national benefit or a source of national wealth.</p>

<p class="author"><span class="smcap">F. W. Newman.</span></p>

<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4" id="Footnote_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a>
“Reciprocity,” by Sir Louis Mallet, C.B., 1879: Printed for the Cobden Club.</p></div>
</div>

<hr />

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span></p>

<h2>THE MYTHS OF THE SEA AND THE RIVER OF DEATH.</h2>

<p>At the present time, when theologians and those who have most
aptitude for such discussions are arguing “in thoughts more
elevate” of the soul’s future life, and its rewards and punishments
therein, the pre-historic student is tempted to let <i>his</i> thoughts wander
backwards over a different aspect of the same subject, in an effort to
link again the chain of belief concerning heaven and hell, which joins
this present with a long-forgotten past. The difficulty which we feel in
uniting ourselves in thought with past ages, arises surely more often
from the imperfection of our sympathies than from the deficiency of
our positive knowledge. So many questions which were once new have
long been settled, so many experiments have been tried, such experiences
have been lived through since then; it is so impossible that the
earlier conditions of life and society should return; and we cannot bring
ourselves to make the effort of imagination necessary to place us in
harmony with bygone times. But there are some few questions which
seem as far from settlement now as they ever were; one of these is the
question concerning the destiny of man after death, the character of
his journey into that undiscovered country, and the sort of life he will lead
when there.</p>

<div class="poem">
<span class="i0">“A riddle which one shrinks<br /></span>
<span class="i0">To challenge from the scornful sphinx.”<br /></span>
</div>

<p>Some would dissuade us from the continuance of these (so they
say) unfruitful speculations; but it is very certain that man must change
his nature before they will lose their fascination for him; and until he
does so, he cannot read without sympathy the guesses which past generations
of men have made towards the solution of the same problems. For
them, indeed, these solutions have lost their interest, as ours will soon
do for us. Whatever lot that new condition may hold in store, eternal
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>
pleasure or eternal pain, they have tried it now; whatever scene the
dark curtain hides, they have passed behind it. This is very certain: as
that we soon must. But so long as we remain here upon this upper earth,
we must be something above or below humanity if we refuse ever to let
our thoughts wander toward the changes and chances of another life.</p>

<p>Not, indeed, that questions of this sort have ever had for the majority
of men in one age, or for the collective mass of human kind, an all-absorbing
interest. If we choose to look closely into the matter, and to test
men’s opinion as it is displayed in their actions (the only real opinion),
we shall at first perhaps be struck by the slight belief which they
possess in a future state. For it is slight compared to their “notional
assent,” that which they think they believe concerning it. With the
majority, faith upon this point is at best but shadowy, of an otiose
character suitable for soothing the lots of others, and sometimes, alas!
called into requisition to relieve us from the stings of conscience
on account of the pain which our own misconduct or neglect has introduced
therein. And as it is with us, so, save under exceptional conditions,
it has always been with men in the full vigour and enjoyment of life.
There have been times when one aspect of the future—its terror—has
been realized with an intensity, and has exercised an influence upon
life and conduct, such as is unknown in our days. But these times have
not been ordinary ones, and we are apt, I think, even to over-estimate the
force of faith during the Middle Ages. That term, “dark ages,” overrides
our fancy; “we can never hear mention of them without an accompanying
feeling as though a palpable obscure had dimmed the face of
things, and that our ancestors wandered to and fro
groping.”<a name="FNanchor_5" id="FNanchor_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> But, then,
neither have the most light-hearted and sceptical of people been able to
shut their eyes utterly to the warnings of death. We are wont to think
of the Greeks as of just such a light-hearted, and in a fashion sceptical,
temperament, and to contrast the spirit of Hellas with the spirit of
mediæval Europe. Scarcely any thought of death, or of judgment after
death, disturbs the serenity of Greek art, such as it has come down to us. Thanatos is not to be
found;<a name="FNanchor_6" id="FNanchor_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a>
even the tombs are adorned with representations of war and of the chase, or with figures of the dancing
Hours. And yet Greek art was not without its darker side. It had,
like mediæval poetry, its Dante—Polygnotus, namely—who adorned the
pilgrims’ house at Delphi with frescoes representing the judgment and the
tortures of the damned,—a Greek Campo Santo. He would have given
us a different impression of the Greek mind in presence of the fact of mortality,
and shown us how easily we are led to exaggerate the divergence in
thought between different nations and different times.</p>

<p>So we find as far back as we can test the belief of men, certain
theories touching the fate of the soul after death, which represent, in
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>
the germ at least, the prevalent opinions of our own day; and out of
some of which these opinions have sprung. First among these, probably
in point of time, stands the purely sceptical theory which takes its
rise from the earliest efforts of language to give expression to the
unseen. Casting about for a name for the essential part of man, the
life or soul of him, language finds at first that it has no suitable word,
and then supplies its want by using the breath—the <span class="greek" title="psychê">ψυχη</span>, <i>spiritus</i>—in this
sense. Like the vital spark itself, the breath is seen to depart when the
man dies. Whither has it gone? The purely negative, the purely
sceptical answer would be, “It has disappeared.” The answer actually
given in most religious creeds is, “It has gone to the unseen <i>place</i>,” or
the concealed <i>place</i>; as the Greeks said, to Hades (<span class="greek" title="A-idês">Ἀ-ίδης</span>);
or, as our Northern ancestors said, to
Hel.<a name="FNanchor_7" id="FNanchor_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a>
Thus, out of pure negation we have the
beginning of a myth: the <i>spirit</i> becomes something definite, and the
place it has gone to is partly realized. The unseen place is underground,
gained by a dark valley which stretches there from the upper
earth. Enough of the old belief remains to keep this home of the
dead itself dark and shadowy and lifeless. “The senseless dead, the
simulacra of mortals,” as Homer says. And we remember how even a
hero like Achilles “would rather be on earth and serve for hire to a man
of mean estate, than rule a king among the dead.”</p>

<p>The same thought is expressed by the Hebrew
poet,<a name="FNanchor_8" id="FNanchor_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></p>

<div class="poem">
<span class="i0">“Sheol shall not praise thee, Jehovah,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">The dead shall not celebrate thee;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">They that go down unto the pit shall not hope for thy truth;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">The living, the living, shall praise thee, as I do this day.”<br /></span>
</div>

<p>No people have held up this <i>destructive</i> side of death, this negative
theory of a future, with sharper outline than the Greeks and Hebrews.
What a contrast to the teaching of modern religions is that line, “They
that go down unto the pit shall not hope for thy truth!” Other people
have found themselves unable to rest at this point; they have endowed
their place with a personality, but, still strongly impressed with its
horrors, this personality is grim and fearful. Even with the Greeks,
Hades is a person, not a place; with the Teutons, Hel has gone through
the same transformation: and a thousand other images of horror to be
met with in different creeds, devouring dragons, dogs who, like Cerberus,
threaten those who are journeying to the underground kingdom, can be
shown by their names to have sprung from merely negative images of
death, the unseen, the coverer, the concealer, the cave of night.</p>

<p>In contrast therefore with all these myths stand those which, after
death, send the soul upon a journey to some paradise, believed generally
to lie in the west. If these first are myths of hell, the second series
may be fairly described as myths of heaven. Nor can it be certainly
proved that the more cheerful view of the other world is of a later
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>
growth in time than the first which seems so primitive. We see indications
of it in the interments of old stone-age grave mounds. While
among historical people the older Hebrews are the exponents of the
gloomier Sheol, the most hopeful picture of the soul’s future finds expression
in the ritual service of the Egyptians. There we have a
complete history of the dead man’s journey across the Nile and through
the twilight region of Apap, king of the desert, until at last it reaches
the home of the sun. And, to come nearer home, among all those
peoples with whom we are allied in blood, the Indo-European family of
nations, we shall find the evidences of a double belief, the belief in
death as of a dim underground place or as a devouring monster, and
the contrasting faith in death as a journey undertaken to reach a new
country where everything is better and happier than upon earth.</p>

<p>This is the myth of an earthly paradise, not, like our heaven, disconnected
altogether from the world, but a distant land lying somewhere in
the west, and forming part of the imaginary geography of those times: so
the belief is, more than others, a realistic one, mingling with the daily
experience of men and influencing deeply their daily life. The necessary
portal of death is even sometimes lost sight of altogether, as when in
the Middle Ages we find men undertaking more than one expedition in
search of the earthly paradise, and when we find the current belief that
in certain weathers was visible from the west coast of Ireland that
happy island to which St. Brandon and his disciples had been carried
when they left this world. For this reason, though the notion of the
western paradise is essentially the same for all the human race, its
local colouring constantly varies, changing with the geographical position
of each people: if they change their homes and advance, as they will
probably do, towards the land of promise, it moves away before them, as
the rainbow moves from us. The Egyptians had their myth of the
soul’s journey, drawing all its distinctive features from the special
character of their land, chiefly from the commanding influence which a
great neighbouring desert exercised upon their imagination. But for our
ancestors, the parents of the Indo-European races, the place of the desert
was supplied by the sea.</p>

<p>The most probable conjecture has fixed the cradle of our race in that
corner of land which lies westward the steep range of the Beloot
Tagh mountains, an off-shoot of the Himalayas, and northward from
the high barren land of Cabul. This country, the ancient Bactriana,
is the most habitable district to be found anywhere in Central Asia.
There the hills stretch out in gentle slopes towards the west, and
enclose fertile valleys, whose innumerable streams, fed by the mountains
east and south, all go to swell the waters of the Oxus, now called the
Jihon. Farther north lies another fruitful country, watered by the
Jaxartes, separated from the first by a range of hills much inferior to
those which divide both lands from Yarkand and Cashgar on the
east, and from Cabul on the south. Both the great rivers empty themselves
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>
into the Sea of Aral, between which and the Caspian, sharply
cutting off the fertile country from that sea, stretches the Khiva desert,
a barren land affording a scanty nourishment to the herds of wandering
Turkic tribes. There is good reason to believe, however, that this
desert did not always exist, but that in times not extraordinarily remote
the Caspian Sea, joined to the Sea of Aral, extended over a much larger
area than it at present covers: it is known even now to be sinking steadily
within its banks. With such a contraction of the great sea the desert
would grow by a double process, by the laying bare its sandy bed and by
the withdrawal of a neighbouring supply of moisture from the dry land.
So it may well have been that the fruitful territory wherein in remotest
ages were settled our Aryan ancestors, stretched so far west as to border
upon a large inland Asiatic sea. It has even been conjectured that the
turning of so much fertile land into desert was the proximate cause of
those migrations which sent the greater part of the Aryan races westward—to
people, at last, all the countries of Europe. The root which
is common to the European languages for the names of the sea, means,
in the Indian and Iranian languages, a desert: how can we account for
this fact better than by supposing that after the European nations had
left their early home, their brethren, who remained behind and who long
afterwards separated into the people of India and Persia, came to know
as a desert the district which their fathers had once known as the sea?</p>

<p>Thus, these ancient Aryans stood with their backs toward the mountains
and their faces toward the sea. All their prospect, all their
future, seemed to be that way; when their migrations began they were
undertaken in that direction—towards the west. Most important of
all in the formation of a creed, their sun-god, or
sun-hero,<a name="FNanchor_9" id="FNanchor_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> was seen
by many of them quenching his beams in the waters; the home of the
sun is always likewise the home of souls. What more natural, nay,
what so necessary, as that the Aryan paradise should lie westward
beyond the sea? It has been said just now that the Indian word for desert
corresponds etymologically with the European word for sea: that word
must have been, in the old Aryan, something like <i>mara</i>, from which we
get the Persian <i>mĕru</i>, desert, the Latin <i>mare</i>, the Teutonic (German and
English) <i>meer</i>. But from identically the same root we likewise get the
Sanksrit and the Zend (old Persian) <i>mara</i>, death, the Latin <i>mors</i>, the
old Norse <i>mordh</i>, the German <i>mord</i>, our <i>murder</i>, all signifying originally
the same thing.<a name="FNanchor_10" id="FNanchor_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a>
What, then, does this imply? The word which the
old Aryans used for sea they used likewise for death. How would this
be possible, unless this, their first sea, were likewise the sea of death,
the necessary stage upon the road to paradise?</p>

<p>It might have been expected that such a connection of ideas would
have endowed the sea with an entirely terrible character, precluding any
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>
attempt to explore its solitudes, or the lands which lay beyond. It has
been already said that as a matter of experience we find that the
<i>earthly</i> paradise often comes to be realized so vividly that men lose
the fear which should attach to any attempt at finding it. They were
not religious, heavenward-looking men who, in Mr. Morris’s poem, set
out in quest of the happy land; and no doubt the bard has been
guided by a true instinct, and that of all those mediæval mariners who
were lost in their search after St. Brandon’s isle, none knew that they
had found what they were seeking—Death. The Greeks eagerly cherished
delusions of the same kind; and long before they had summoned up
courage sufficient to navigate the Mediterranean they had invented the
myths of their western islands of the blest, to which yellow-haired
Rhadamanthus was taken when expelled from Crete by his brother
Minos, or of those gardens kept by the daughters of the
west,<a name="FNanchor_11" id="FNanchor_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> where
decay and death could not enter. It is likely enough that for the
Aryans <i>their</i> western sea did long retain its more fearful meaning,
<i>a death</i>; but that they at last gained courage to look upon it only as <i>the
road</i><a name="FNanchor_12" id="FNanchor_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a>
to the land of which they had long been dreaming.</p>

<p>How much more weighty a position the sea takes in men’s thoughts
than is warranted by their real familiarity with it! Into the mass of
sedentary lives—the vast majority—it enters but seldom as an experience,
provided a man live only a few miles inland. And yet of all countries
which possess a sea-board, how full is the literature of reference to this
one phenomenon of physical nature! The sun and the moon, and all
the heavenly bodies, the familiar sights and sounds of land, are the
property of all; and yet allusions to these are not more common in
literature than allusions to the sea: one might fancy that man was
amphibious, with a power of actually living <i>upon</i>, and not only <i>by</i>, the
water. Charles Lamb acutely penetrates the cause of a certain disappointment
we all feel at the sight of the sea for the first time. We go
with the expectation of seeing all the sea at once, the commensurate
antagonist of the earth. All that we have gathered from narratives of
wandering seamen, what we have gained from true voyages, and what
we cherish as credulously from romances and poetry, come crowding
their images, and exacting strange tributes from expectation. Thus
we are imbued with thoughts of the sea before we have had any sight
of it ourselves, merely by the sea’s great influence acting through the
total experience of humanity. “We think of the great deep and of
those who go down unto it: of its thousand isles, and of the vast continents
it washes; of its receiving the mighty Plata, or Orellana, into its
bosom, without disturbance or sense of augmentation; of Biscay swells
and the mariner—</p>

<div class="poem">
<span class="i0">“For many a day and many a dreadful night,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Incessant labouring round the stormy cape;<br /></span>
</div>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>
of fatal rocks and the ‘still-vexed Bermoothes;’ of great whirlpools
and the water-spout; of sunken ships and sumless treasures swallowed
up in the unrestoring depths.” We must not narrow the influence of
the sea in mythology within the compass of man’s mere experience of it.
Few among the Aryans lived by the Caspian shore; but the Sea of
Death appears in one form or another in the religious belief of all the
Aryan people. The tradition of the sea, its real wonders, and greater
fancied terrors, must have passed from one to another, from the few who
lived within sight and sound of the waters to others quite beyond its
horizon, to whom it was not visible even as a faint silvery line.</p>

<p>It is natural that, in early myths, no accurate distinction should have
been drawn between the sea and rivers with which the Aryans were
familiar. The Caspian was imagined a broad river bounding the habitable
earth, the origin of the Oceanus of the Greeks; and the sea of death
is, in its earliest form, a river of death. All after-forms of mythical
geography, moreover, such as we find among Indians, Greeks, or Norsemen,
are but graftings upon this central idea. As the Aryans changed
their homes, the new experiences gradually blotted out the old. The
Greek transferred his thoughts about the Caspian to the Mediterranean,
and when his geography extended, the Oceanus was pushed farther and
farther away, until the later Euhemerist geographers came to confound
it with the Atlantic. Thus it is but by accident that we give to ocean
the meaning which it now bears. The first ocean was the mythical river
which flowed round the earth, and the real physical forerunner of the
myth was not the Atlantic or any of our oceans, but the Caspian Sea as
it stretched before the eyes of the ancient Aryan folk.</p>

<p>The Norseman, especially the
Icelander,<a name="FNanchor_13" id="FNanchor_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a>
lived so close to the ocean,
that the older myth was forgotten beside the aspect of nature so familiar
to him. In the middle of his earth stood a high mountain, on which was a
strong city, Asgaard, the house of the Æsir or gods. Below Asgaard lay
the green and fruitful earth, man’s home. Then outside flowed or lay
the great mid-earth ocean, just like the Greek ocean in character, despite
all differences of climate and country. At other times the mid-earth
sea is personified as a devouring monster, Jörmungandr (“great monster”),
the name of the mid-gaard serpent who lies at the bottom of the encircling
sea, shaking the earth when he
moves.<a name="FNanchor_14" id="FNanchor_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a>
Beyond, lies the ice-bound land
of giants—Jötunheim, giant’s home—dark like the Cimmerian land,
and peopled with beings as weird and terrible as the Cyclops or the
Gorgons.</p>

<p>Gradually the myths of the river of death and the sea of death from
being one became two. The second was confined to those nations who
lived upon the sea-shore, and lost in great part its early shape; but
neither Indians, Greeks, nor Norsemen forgot the myth of the mortal
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>
river. The Indian retained it singly; for when his turn for wandering
came, he passed over the eastern mountains and reached a land where
no sea was any longer to be seen or heard of. In the mythical language
of the Vedas, the mortal river is called Vaitera<i>n</i>i; it lies “across the dreadful path to the house of
Yama,”<a name="FNanchor_15" id="FNanchor_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> the god of Hell.</p>

<p>From the belief in the river of death no doubt arose also the practice
of committing the dead to the care of the sacred Ganges; for just as the
Hindus kindle a funeral fire in the boat which bears the dead down this
visible stream of death, so used the Norsemen to place their hero’s body in
his ship, and then having lighted it send it drifting out seawards with
the tide. In conjunction with that thought of the other world which
placed the final resting-place in a dark kingdom underground, the river
is seen in Greek mythology transferred to Hades; but it is multiplied
into four, which have all grown out of one, inasmuch as they were feigned
to flow out of the upper-earth river Oceanus:—</p>

<div class="poem">
<span class="i0">“Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Sad Acheron, of sorrow, black and deep;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Cocytus named of lamentation loud<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage.”<br /></span>
</div>

<p>These pictures are not quite in character with the Hellenic thought
about the future state. But it is certain that the more gloomy images of
death are preserved in connection with the rivers of Hades, with Hades
itself, and all that it contains. So it is with the northern Styx,
Gjöll,<a name="FNanchor_16" id="FNanchor_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a>
as it is called in the Eddas. This, too, is an underground stream
lying, like the Indian, on the road to the gates of death.</p>

<p>Thus a separation arises between the sea and the river myths. If we
wish for something more cheerful than the pictures of Styx and Gjöll
and Vaitera<i>n</i>i, we must look, for the tales of an earthly paradise which
sprang up when men had lost their first terror of the sea, but had not
lost the beliefs to which their earliest thoughts about that sea gave
birth.</p>

<p>Such beliefs are those which lie enshrined in the Odyssey. This poem
is full of images of death, but they are not self-conscious ones, only
mythical expressions first applied to the passage of the soul from life, and
then made literal and physical by their transference to the unexplored
western sea. What the Caspian may have been to the ancient Aryan, such
was the Mediterranean to the Greek. The Ægean was his home-like water;
there he might pass from island to island without losing sight of land;
and he soon learnt to trust himself to its care, and to know its currents
and its winds. Long before he had navigated beyond Cape Malea,
all the coasts of the Ægean had become parts of his familiar world:
outside this was the region of the unknown. The Iliad tells us what
the early Greeks thought about the first. Myths may have mingled
with the legend of the fall of Troy, but the story in Homer is essentially
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>
realistic, rationalistic even. The very powers of the immortals and their
doings seem petty and limited. The Odyssey, on the other hand, is the
product of the Greek imagination working in fields unturned by experience,
free from any guiding impulse of knowledge; and here step in those
monstrous shapes and strange adventures which differ altogether from
the probable events of the Iliad. We feel at once that we are in a new
world, a world not so much of supernatural beings as of magic; lands of
glamour and illusion, most like the giant-land of the Norsemen; for we
are getting towards the twilight regions of the earth and the borders of
Hades.</p>

<p>Some writers have attempted to explain the Odyssey as nothing more
than a myth of the sun’s course through heaven. But surely there is too
much solidity about the story, too thorough an atmosphere of belief around
it, to suit a tale relating such airy unrealities as those. The Greeks who first
sung the ballads must have been thinking of a real journey upon this solid
earth. But it is easy to see how many images and notions which had
first been applied only to the sun-god would creep into such a history as
that of Odysseus. Undoubtedly the sun-myth had first pointed out the
home of the dead as lying in the west; and nothing is more natural than
that a people whose thoughts and hopes carried them in the track of the
wandering sun should, when they came to construct an epos of travel,
make the imaginary journey lie the same way. They would interweave
in the story such truths—or such sailors’ yarns—as Phœnician
mariners or adventurous Greeks brought home from the distant waters,
with many images which had been first made of the sun’s heavenly
voyage, and others which had been first applied to death. Their geography
would, indeed, be mythical; for they could have no accurate notions
of the lands which they spoke of; but it would not be without a kernel
of reality. Justin and Augustine may look upon the garden of the
Hesperides or the garden of Alcinoüs as a reminiscence of Paradise;
Strabo may assign them an exact position on the coast of Libya; and both
may be right. The myth of the two gardens—the Hebrew and the
Greek paradises—sprang up in obedience to an identical faculty of
belief, and therefore the two stories are in origin the same. But each
myth supported itself upon so much of reality as it could lay hold of:
and it is likely enough that the famous golden apples which Hercules was
sent to fetch owed their origin to the first oranges brought by Phœnician
merchantmen to Greece.</p>

<p>Besides some such slender thread of reality, the adventures of Odysseus
are built upon what men’s imagination told them might lie in the
western seas. Now in reality there was only one thing which at the
bottom of their hearts they believed actually did lie there—namely, death;
and beyond that, the home of the departed. Therefore their stories of
adventure in the Mediterranean do all, upon a minute inspection, resolve
themselves into a variety of mythical ways of describing death; and upon
this as a dark background the varied colours of the tale are painted. It
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>
need take away no jot of our pleasure in the brilliant picture to acknowledge
this. Nay, it gather adds to it, for behind the graceful air of the
poem, sung as a poem only, we hear a deeper note telling of the passionate,
obstinate questionings of futurity which belonged not more to Greece
three thousand years ago than they now belong to us.</p>

<p>Any one acquainted with the genesis of myth would at once be disposed
to see in the Odyssey the combination of two different legends; for one
series of adventures comes as a tale told during the course of the second.
We first see our hero on the island of Calypso, the sea-nymph; and
when Hermes has brought from the gods the command for his release,
he is carried thence by storms to the land of the Phæaceans. There
Nausicaa finds him and brings him to her father Alcinoüs, by whom he
is hospitably entertained, and at last sent back to Ithaca, his home.
This forms one complete legend, the simplest and probably the first,
because <i>into</i> it is woven the account of Odysseus’ earlier adventures. In
the halls of Alcinoüs the wanderer tells what happened to him before
he reached the cave of Calypso, and in this narrative we follow him to
the island of the Lotus-eaters, to the island of the Cyclops, thence to the
house of Circe, and from there to the very borders of hell itself. And
we guess that we have here got hold of a later amplified legend built up
out of the earlier myth. We find just such changes as this in Norse
mythology; a story told in a few lines by the elder Edda, is expanded
into an elaborate history in the younger. Looking again more closely at the
Odyssey, we discover that many circumstances in the expanded tale bear
close resemblance to one or other of the adventures in the shorter category.
Take, for instance, the life with Calypso and with Circe. Both
Calypso and Circe are nymphs, enchantresses; each lives alone upon her
island: with each Odysseus passes a term of years, living with her as
her husband, longing all the while to return to his own wife and his
own home, and yet unable to do so: from each Hermes is the deliverer.
What if Calypso and Circe both repeat in reality the same
myth; and what if Odysseus’ other great adventure, the voyage to the
Phæaceans, have likewise its counterpart in the expanded story? The
question of the real identity or difference of the two stories can only be
decided when we have seen how much significance there is in the points
of their apparent likeness.</p>

<p>Who is Calypso? Her name bespeaks her nature not ambiguously.
It is from <span class="greek" title="kalyptein">καλύπτειν</span>, to cover or conceal. She is the shrouder, or the
shrouded place, answering exactly therefore to Hel, which, as has
before been said, comes from the verb <i>helja</i>, “to hide.” How, then,
can Calypso be anything else than death, as she dwells there in her cave,
by the shores of the sea? How can Odysseus’ life with her, his sleep
in her cave, be anything else than an image of dying? The gods
have determined that the hero shall not remain in this mortal sleep for
ever; so Hermes is sent to command Calypso to let Odysseus go.
Hermes is the god whose mission it is to lead souls down to the realm
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>
of Hades—the psychopomp, as in this office he is called. But sometimes
he may come upon an opposite message, to restore men to life; the
staff which closes the eyes of men may likewise open them when asleep.
On such a task he comes—</p>

<div class="poem">
<span class="i0">“Wind-like beneath, the immortal golden sandals<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Bare up his flight o’er the limitless earth and the sea;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And in his hand that magic wand he carried,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Wherewith the eyes of men he closes in slumber,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Or wakens from sleeping.”<br /></span>
</div>

<p>He comes like the breath of morning awakening the world, to rouse
our hero from the embrace of death; and the whole scene is beautifully
attuned to an image of returning life. Therefore the interference of
Hermes between Odysseus and Calypso is full of significance. We
accordingly meet the same episode in the Circe tale. That this last is
a later widening of the first story appears from many things; chiefly
in this, that there is more moral in the history; for the truest myth is
content to follow the actual workings of nature, without attempting to
adorn a story with extraneous incident, or to convert its simplicity
into the complexities of allegory. That turning the companions into
swine was a punishment for luxury—that points the moral; the original
Circe, we may be sure, only touched her lovers with her sleepy magic
rod. It was the same wand with the
“slepy yerde”<a name="FNanchor_17" id="FNanchor_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> of Hermes, and
she used it not wantonly but only because all whom she embraces must
fall into the unwakeful slumber. If Circe’s name does not reveal her
nature so nakedly as Calypso’s does, this is but consistent with the fact
of her later creation. Nevertheless, we easily recognise by it death in
one of its many types—a ravenous animal or bird, a hawk or
wolf.<a name="FNanchor_18" id="FNanchor_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a></p>

<p>When Odysseus is freed from the fatal embrace of Calypso, he is
not at once restored to the common earth, but from his descent into
hell goes heavenwards, or at least to the happy islands of the blessed.
The land of the Phæaceans, Scheria, can scarcely be anything else than
this Paradise, to which, according to one myth, Rhadamanthus fled from
his brother Minos when he reigned in Crete. The Phæaceans, too, have
had dealings with “yellow-haired Rhadamanthus,” whom they carried
back in their swift barques to Eubœa. The name of their island is
merely land, shore;<a name="FNanchor_19" id="FNanchor_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a>
perhaps at first only the farther coast of the sea of
death.</p>

<div class="poem">
<span class="i0">“Far away do we live at the end of the watery plain,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Nor before now have we ever had dealings with other mortals;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">But now there comes some luckless wanderer hither.<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Him it is right that we help; for all men, fellows and strangers,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Come from Zeus; in his sight the smallest gift is
pleasing.”<a name="FNanchor_20" id="FNanchor_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a><br /></span>
</div>

<p>They live close to the gods, and in familiar converse with
them. It is a place where decay and death cannot enter. In the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>
gardens of Alcinoüs flowers and fruit do not grow old and disappear;
winter does not succeed to summer; all is one continuous round of
blossoming and bearing fruit; in one part of the garden the trees are all
abloom; in another they are heavy with clusters. There it <i>is</i>, as in that
wizard’s tower of Middle-Age legend it only <i>seemed</i> to be—</p>

<div class="poem">
<span class="i0">“That from one window men beheld the spring,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And from another saw the summer glow,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And from a third the fruited vines
arow.”<a name="FNanchor_21" id="FNanchor_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a><br /></span>
</div>

<p>In name the Phæaceans appear as beings of the twilight—<span class="greek" title="phaiax">φαίαξ</span>,
strengthened from <span class="greek" title="phaios">φαιός</span>, dusky, dim. Their most wondrous possessions
are their ships, which know the thoughts of men, and sail
swifter than a bird or than thought. “No pilots have they, no rudders, no
oarsmen, which other ships have, for they themselves know the thoughts
and minds of men. The rich fields they know, and the cities among all
men, and swiftly pass over the crests of the sea, shrouded in mist and
gloom.”<a name="FNanchor_22" id="FNanchor_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a>
Yet the Phæaceans themselves live remote from human habitation, unused
to strangers. It would seem, therefore, that the ships travel alone on
their dark voyages. For what purpose? It is not difficult to guess.
Their part is to carry the souls of dead men over to the land
of Paradise.<a name="FNanchor_23" id="FNanchor_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a>
We can imagine them sailing in every human sea;
calling at every port, familiar with every city, though in their shroud of
darkness they are unseen by men. They know all the rich lands, for
every land has its tribute to pay to the ships of death. They are the
exact counterparts of the “grim ferryman which poets write of;” only
that the last plies his business in the ancient underground Hades, while
the Phæacean mariners are really believed to be inhabitants of the upper
earth; albeit they can pass from this life to the other.</p>

<p>Their business with Odysseus is to bring him back to the common
world of Greece—to beloved Ithaca. He has passed to the cave of
Hel, and emerged from it to visit the land of Paradise; now he returns,
that his adventures may be sung in the homes of Greece. How could
men ever tell tales of that strange country, if it really were a shore
from which no traveller returned? Accordingly, this traveller is laid
to sleep in the black barque of the Phæaceans, “a sweet sleep, unwakeful,
nearest like to death; and as arose the one brightest star to herald
the morning, the sea-troubled ship touched the
shore.”<a name="FNanchor_24" id="FNanchor_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> Thus end the
adventures of the wanderer; and, as far as regards the belief concerning
the sea of death, this is all his adventures can tell us. His doings with the
Cyclops, with the Lotus-eaters, have their relationship with the same
belief; but they scarcely bring in any new elements; they only change
the method of their treatment and symbolize them in a new way. Hades
is more distinctly treated of in the second series; and this is enough to
show us that the mortal character of the whole journey has been lost
sight of more completely than in the first myths; so we noticed before,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>
that the significance of Calypso’s name is half forgotten when her part
is assigned to Circe. The journey to Hades from Circe’s island, Ææa,
tallies exactly with the journey to Scheria from the island of Calypso; only,
for the island of the blest is substituted the underground home of souls;
and when Odysseus addresses there his companion, Elpenor, whom he had
but a little while ago left dead on Circe’s island, and asks him how
he could have come under the dark west more quickly on foot than
Odysseus did sailing in a black ship, we see that the meaning of the
ocean journey is forgotten, and that a sort of confusion has arisen between
the Hades under men’s feet, to which the souls of the dead
descend, and the Hades at the end of the journey lying far away.
This part, then, is not significant of the Greek belief concerning
an earthly Paradise. The learned Welcker, who first showed how these Phæacean ships were the carriers of
souls,<a name="FNanchor_25" id="FNanchor_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a>
wishes also to connect the myth with some non-Hellenic source. He supposes it to have been
gathered from the Teutons. But surely we are not obliged to go so
far, unless we are prepared to consider Charon non-Hellenic also; and
no one can really pretend that. For the Phæacean myth is in many
ways truer than the myth of Charon and Styx. Styx is but the earth-river
(or sea), Oceanus, transferred to beneath the earth; and the story of
the ferryman is a compromise between the two creeds—that of the
<i>under</i>-world and that of the western paradise beyond sea; while the
myth of the Phæaceans is a simple expression of the last. The connection
which we find between Greek and German in these beliefs is
derivable only from their common ancestry—not from a contact in later
days. Certainly these legends have their close counterparts in Norse
mythology; the two series only require to be stripped of local colouring,
and some unessential details, to display very clearly their common brotherhood.
How curious, for instance, is it to see that Calypso corresponds
literally in name with the Northern goddess of the dead, Hel! Another
myth, the story of the burning of Baldur, repeats the same images of
death which we trace in the legend of Odysseus.</p>

<p>Baldur is quite evidently the sun-god. Less of a hero, more of a god,
than Odysseus, he is nevertheless mortal—as, indeed, all the Norse gods
are—and falls pierced by the hand of his own brother, Hödur. Then
his corpse is placed upon his ship, Hringhorn, and sent out upon this, as on
a pyre, drifting into the ocean. We can imagine how to the Norsemen
upon their stormy seas, the image of the sun dying red upon the western
waters recalled the story of Baldur’s burning ship. The Viking imitated
his god in this, and when his time came ordered his funeral fire
to be lighted in like manner upon a ship and himself to be set sailing,
as Baldur was. After this we are brought in the myth to the underground
kingdom of Hel, and there the goddess entertains Baldur, as
Calypso entertained Odysseus, making ready her best to do him honour,
and seating him in the highest place in her hall. Then the gods take
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>
counsel how Baldur is to be brought back again, and one of them,
Hermödr,<a name="FNanchor_26" id="FNanchor_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a>
the messenger, like Hermes, is sent to beg Hel to let Baldur
out of Helheim. Fate and death are more powerful in northern lands
than they are in Greece. The gods cannot command that this Calypso
should let her prisoner go; and alas! they do not even obtain an answer
to their prayer save on conditions which they are unable to fulfil. Hel
will set Baldur free, if all things, both living and dead, weep for him;
but if one thing refuses to weep, then he must remain in the under-world.
Thereupon the gods sent messengers over the whole earth, commanding
all things, living and lifeless, to weep Baldur out of Helheim;
all things freely complied with the request, both men and stones, and trees
and metals; until as the messengers were returning, deeming that their
mission was accomplished, they met an old witch sitting in a cave, and
she refused to weep, saying, “Let Hel keep her
own.”<a name="FNanchor_27" id="FNanchor_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> This old witch
is Calypso or Circe in another guise. Her name is Thokk, that is,
darkness (dökkr).</p>

<p>The Teutonic people had many myths and stories about the carrying the
dead across the sea. We have signalized the belief in such a passage as the
origin of those countless mediæval legends of the earthly Paradise: doubtless
it is the parent of the modern superstition that ghosts will not cross the
running water. Side by side with the story of the Phæaceans we may place
the superstition which Procopius records touching our own island. The
Byzantine historian of Justinian seems to have had but vague ideas of
the position of Britain, which, by the tide of Teutonic invasion across the
Rhine, had long been cut off from intercourse with the Empire. These
Easterns were careless and ignorant of the remote West. So Procopius
speaks of Britannia as lying opposite to Spain; and then he mentions
another island, Brittia—evidently in reality our island—which faces the
northern coast of Gaul, and of this he tells the following strange story:—There
is, he declares, an island called Brittia, which lies in the Northern
Seas. It is separated into two divisions by a
wall;<a name="FNanchor_28" id="FNanchor_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> and on one side of
this wall the air is healthy and the land fertile and pleasant, and all
things most apt for human habitation. But on the other side the air is
so noxious that no one can breathe in it for an hour: it is given up to
serpents and poisonous animals and plants. Yet not entirely; for
this is the home of the dead. Then he goes on to relate how the
fishermen who inhabit the coast opposite this part of Brittia have to
perform the strange duty of carrying the souls across the strait. Each
does his office in rotation; when the man’s night has come he is awoke
by a knocking at his door, but when he opens it, sees no one. He goes
down to the shore, and finds there strange vessels, which, though empty
to mortal eyes, lie deep in the water as though weighed down by some
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>
freight. Stepping in, each fisherman takes his rudder, and then by an
unfelt wind the vessels are wafted in one night across the channel, a
distance which, with oar and sail, they could usually scarce accomplish
in eight. Arrived at the opposite side—our coast—the fishermen heard
names called over and voices answering in rota, and they felt the boats
becoming light. Then, when all the ghosts were landed, they were
carried back to Gaul. We may picture them returning to the habitable
world in the first glow of morning, or with the one bright morning star
which shone on Odysseus landing at Ithaca.</p>

<p>So much for the myth of the sea, or river, of death. A most important
change was wrought in belief when the custom of burning the dead
was introduced. It would seem that our Aryan ancestors were the
beginners of this rite. Whence it arose we cannot say; but if the God
of Fire was a prominent divinity, the thought of committing the dead
into his charge seems a simple and natural one. Among the Aryan
people the only deep traces of fire-worship are to be seen in the Vedic
and Iranian religions,<a name="FNanchor_29" id="FNanchor_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a>
while the fire-burial survived in all: but the former
may well have held a prominent place in their older creed. Or—and this
is far from unlikely—the custom of fire-burial may have arisen out of
the sun myth, just as the belief in the soul’s journey after death was
suggested by watching the sun’s journey to the west. The two great
fire-funerals mentioned in Greek and Teutonic mythology are the
funerals of sun-gods. Heracles burning on Mount Œta, on the western
coast of the Ægean, may have been first thought of by Greeks who saw
the sun setting in fire over that sea; and Baldur’s bale on the ship
<i>Hringhorn</i> is evidently the Norse edition of the same story, his blazing
ship the blaze in the sky, as the sun sinks into the water. Burning the
dead never seems to have been a universal practice; rather a special
honour paid to kings and heroes. But then we must remember that
immortality itself was not, in ancient belief, granted to all men indiscriminately,
only to the greatest.</p>

<p>We see at once that with the use of fire-burial many of the old beliefs
had to be given up; all those, for instance, which depended upon the preservation
of the bodily remains. Of old time men had buried treasures
with the corpse in the expectation that they would be of some kind of use
to it; the body itself was at first imagined to descend to the under-world
or to travel the western journey to the home of the sun. But now the body
is visibly consumed upon the funeral pile, where, too, are placed, by a
curious survival of old custom, the precious things which would formerly
have been buried with it in the ground. The body and these
things have been consumed, are gone; where have they gone? Have
they perished utterly, and is there nothing more left than the earliest
belief of an <span class="greek" title="A-idês">Ἀ-ίδης</span>—a nowhere; is nothing true of all those myths
of the soul passing away to a home of bliss? Instead of giving
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>
up this faith, the Aryan people have only spiritualized it, robbed it
of the too literal and earthly clothing which in earlier times it wore.
The thought which had once identified the life with the breath comes
again into force, or, if some material representation is still wished for,
we have the smoke of the funeral pyre, which rises heavenwards like
an ascending soul. In this spirit we find in long after years, in
the description of the funeral fire of Beowulf the Goth, it is said
that the soul of the hero <i>wand to wolcum</i>, “curled to the clouds,”
imaging the smoke which was curling up from his pyre. There is
even a curious analogy between the words for <i>smoke</i> and <i>soul</i> in the
Aryan languages, showing how closely the two ideas were once allied.
From a primitive root <i>dhu</i>, which means to shake or blow, we get both
the Sanskrit root <i>dhuma</i>, smoke, and the Greek <span class="greek" title="thymos">θυμός</span>, the immaterial
part of man, his thought or soul. <span class="greek" title="Thymos">Θυμός</span> is not a mere abstraction like
our word mind, but that which could live when the body was killed or
wasted to death by disease.<a name="FNanchor_30" id="FNanchor_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a></p>

<p>Evidently, therefore, even the inanimate things, the weapons and
treasures which are burnt with the dead, survive in a land of essences
for the use of the liberated soul. To the question, Where does man’s
essence go to when it rises from the funeral fire? the answer, if the
wish alone urged the thought, would be “To the gods.” But with the
majority of burying people the belief in future union with the gods was
not strongly insisted upon. The islands of the blest are certainly not
to be confounded with Olympus; although the Phæaceans claim to live
very near the gods.<a name="FNanchor_31" id="FNanchor_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a>
Yet with the use of burning, and among the
Aryan people, the hope gains a measure of strength. The gods of the
Aryan were, before everything, gods of the air. As the soul and the
smoke mounted upwards, “curled to the clouds,” the belief of its having
gone to join the gods—chief god, Dyâus, the air—was impressed more
vividly upon his mind. And as the notion of the western journey
to the home of the sun was not abandoned, a natural compromise would
be to send the soul upwards to the path of the sun, and make its voyage
a voyage in heaven, led by the sun or by the wind. But his path still
lay westward; the home of the dead ancestors lay beyond the western
boundary; there was still an Oceanus to be crossed, and a dark Cimmerian
land to be passed through.</p>

<p>The heavenly path taken by the soul becomes, in the eye of mortals, a
<i>bridge</i> spanning the celestial arch, and carrying them over the river of
death; and men would soon begin asking themselves where lay this
heavenly road. Night is necessarily associated with thoughts of death—“Death,
and his brother Sleep”—and of the other world. The heavens
wear a more awful aspect than by day. The sun has forsaken us, and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>
is himself buried beneath the earth; and a million dwellers in the
upper regions, who were before unseen, now appear to sight—the stars,
who in so many mythologies are associated with souls. Among the
stars we see a bright, yet misty, bow bent overhead: can this be other
than the destined bridge of souls? The ancient Indians called this
road gods’-path, because besides that it was the way for souls to God,
it was also the way from gods to men. They also called it the cow-path—<i>gôpatha</i>,
meaning possibly cloud-path—from which it is likely we
derive our name for it, “the Milky-way.” The Low-German name for the
Milky-way is <i>kau-pat</i>—<i>i.e., kuh-pfad</i>, cow-path. But in their hymns
the Indians oftenest speak of it as the path of Yama, the way to the
house of Yama, the god of the dead:—</p>

<p>“A narrow path, an ancient one, stretches there, a path untrodden by
men, a path I know of:</p>

<p>“On it the wise who have known Brahma ascend to the world Svarga,
when they have received their dismissal,” sings a Sanskrit
poet.<a name="FNanchor_32" id="FNanchor_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a></p>

<p>Another (R. V. i. 38. 5) prays the Maruts, the gods of the wind, not
to let him wander on the path of Yama, or, when he does so—that is,
when his time shall come—to keep him that he fall not into the hands
of Nirrtis, the Queen of Naraka (Tartarus). In another place we find
as guardians of the bridge two dogs, the dogs of Yama, and the dead
man is committed to their care:—</p>

<p>“Give him, O king Yama, to the two dogs, the watchers, the four-eyed
guardians of the path, guardians of men: grant him safety and
freedom from pain.”</p>

<p>Thus stands out in its complete development the myth of the Bridge
of Souls: a narrow path spanning the arch of heaven, passing over the
dwelling of Nirrtis, the Queen of Tartarus (perhaps not clearly distinguishable
from the river of death), and reaching at last the country of
the wise Pitris, the “fathers” of the tribe, who have gone to heaven
before, and who since their death have not ceased to keep watch over
the descendants of their race. This road is guarded by two dogs, the
dogs of Yama, both wardens of the bridge and likewise psychopomps,
or leaders of the soul up the strait road.</p>

<p>This was essentially an Indian myth—or perhaps an Indian and
Iranian—and took the place of the myth of the sea journey, as it was
conceived by Greeks and Germans. The Indians and Iranians had
never a sea of death, so they could not have such ferrymen as the
Phæaceans, or legends such as the voyages of Odysseus and the burning
of Baldur. In the place of them, and with their mortal <i>river</i>, they
adopted this Bridge of Souls. The guardians are manifold in their
nature; for their names show them related both to Cerberus, who
guards Hades, and to Hermes, who leads the souls of the dead below;
and, so far as we can gather from the Vedas, these dogs of Yama
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>
discharged both offices, sometimes keeping the bridge and sometimes
conducting souls along it. “Give him,” says the prayer, “O Yama, to
the two dogs.” No doubt their terrors were for the wicked only, and
they are thus apt images of death:—</p>

<div class="poem">
<span class="i0">“Death comes to set thee free;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Oh, meet him cheerily<br /></span>
<span class="i0">As thy true
friend.”<a name="FNanchor_33" id="FNanchor_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a><br /></span>
</div>

<p>Still, as we see from their appearance, the dreadful aspect of death
predominates. In like forms, as dogs or wolves, they return time out
of mind in Norse mythology and in Middle-Age legend.</p>

<p>It has been said that this myth of the Bridge of Souls was essentially
Indian and Iranian (old Persian). It is often most difficult to ascertain
what were the ancient Persian beliefs: but in this case the myth
has been handed down to us from the Persians through the Arabs, a
people possessing of right no part or lot in its construction. It is generally
acknowledged that Mohammed took from the Persians that famous bridge so vividly described in the
Korân.<a name="FNanchor_34" id="FNanchor_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a>
Es-Sirât is the bridge’s name. It is finer than a hair and sharper than the edge of a sword,
and is, besides, guarded with thorns and briars along all its length.
Nevertheless, when, at the last day, the good Muslim comes to cross it,
a light will shine upon him from heaven, and he will be snatched across
like lightning or like the wind; but when the wicked man or the unbeliever
approaches, the light will be hidden, and, from the extreme narrowness
of the bridge and likewise becoming entangled in the thorns, he will
fall headlong into the abyss of fire that is beneath. This is the fragment
of our old Aryan mythology which the Mohammedan has taken to
himself to form an image of hell and of punishment after death. It is
significant that from the Persians should have been inherited the most
gloomy myth concerning the Bridge of Souls. For from the same source
we (Christians) gain our fearfullest notions of the Devil.</p>

<p>The bridge cannot be always the Milky-way. In at least one Sanskrit
hymn we learn—</p>

<p>“Upon it, they say, there are colours, white, and blue, and brown,
and gold, and red.</p>

<p>“And this path Brahma knows, and he who has known Brahma shall
take it; he who is pure and glorious.”</p>

<p>Here the singer is evidently describing the rainbow. Now in the
Norse cosmology the rainbow had the same name as the Indian <i>patha-devayano</i>,
gods’-path. The Eddas call it As-bru, the bridge of the Æsir,
or gods. Its other name, Bifröst, the trembling mile, it may even have
inherited from the Milky-way, for that, when we look at it, seems to be
always trembling. Asbru or Bifröst, then, is the bridge whereby the
gods descend to earth. One end of it reaches to the famous Urdar
fount, where sit the weird sisters three—the Nornir, or fates. “Near
the fountain which is under the ash stands a very fair house, out of
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>
which come three maidens, named Urd, Verdandi, and Skuld (Past,
Present, Future). These maidens assign the lifetime of men, and are
called Norns.”<a name="FNanchor_35" id="FNanchor_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a>
To their stream the gods ride every day along Bifröst
to take counsel. For in the Norse creed the gods know not the hidden
things of the future, nor have power to ward them off. Fate and death,
the Twilight of the Gods, lies ahead for them also, as these things lie
ahead of mortals.</p>

<p>It is possible that a trace of the rainbow bridge is to be seen in
the Greek myth of the asphodel meadows, which are a part of the
infernal regions. But no other trace of the Bridge of Souls—if this be
one—is to be found throughout the range of Hellenic mythology.</p>

<p>The Eddas have nothing to say of the Milky-way. But we have
clear evidence that it was considered by the German people a path for
the dead. Indeed, in the scanty legends which survive, we can trace
the characteristic features of the Indian myth of the bridge guarded by
Yama’s dogs, and the souls led along it by the wind-god. The wind-god
of the north is the father of gods, none less than Odin himself;
and this is why Odin is described as riding with his Valkyriur to the
battle-fields, to choose from the dead the heroes who shall go with him
to Valhöll, the hall of the chosen. It is because, as the wind-god, he
collects the breath of the departed. Odin and Freyja (Air and Earth)
divide the slain, says one legend—that is, the bodies go to earth, the
breath goes to heaven. Now, in the Middle Ages, when Odin-worship
had been overthrown, the gods of Asgaard descended to Helheim; from
being deities they were turned into fiends. Odin still pursued his
office as leader of the souls; but now he was huntsman of hell. One
of the commonest appearances of this fiend, therefore, is as a huntsman—called
the Wild Huntsman. He is heard by the peasants of the wild
mountain districts at this day. He is companioned by <i>two dogs</i>, and his
chase goes on along the Milky-way all the year through, save during
the twelve nights which follow Christmas. During that time he hunts
on earth, and the peasant will do well to keep his door well-barred at
night. If he does not, one of the hell-hounds will rush in and lie
down in the ashes of the hearth. No power will move him during the
ensuing year, and for all that time there will be trouble in the house.
When the hunt comes round again he will rise from his couch and
rush forth, wildly howling, to join his master.</p>

<p>A gentler legend is that which we find preserved in a charming poem
of the Swede, Torpelius, called “The Winter Street”—another of the
names for the Milky-way. With this, in the form in which it has been
rendered into English,<a name="FNanchor_36" id="FNanchor_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a>
we may end our list of legends connected with
the Sea of Death or the Bridge of Souls. The story is of two lovers:—</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>
<span class="i2">“Her name Salami was, his Zulamyth;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And each so loved, each other loved. Thus runs the tender myth:<br /></span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">“That once on earth they lived, and, loving there,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Were wrenched apart by night, and sorrow, and despair;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And when death came at last, with white wings given,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Condemned to live apart, each reached a separate heaven.<br /></span>
</div>

<hr />

<div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">“Yet loving still upon the azure height,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Across unmeasured ways of splendour, gleaming bright,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">With worlds on worlds that spread and glowed and burned,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Each unto each, with love that knew no limit, longing turned.<br /></span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">“Zulamyth half consumed, until he willed<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Out of his strength one night a bridge of light to build<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Across the waste—and lo! from her far sun,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">A bridge of light from orb to orb Salami had begun.<br /></span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">“A thousand years they built, still on, with faith,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Immeasurable, quenchless, so my legend saith,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Until the winter street of light—a bridge<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Above heaven’s highest vault swung clear, remotest ridge from ridge.<br /></span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">“Fear seized the Cherubim; to God they spake—<br /></span>
<span class="i0">‘See what amongst thy works, Almighty, these can make!’<br /></span>
<span class="i0">God smiled, and smiling, lit the spheres with joy—<br /></span>
<span class="i0">‘What in my world love builds,’ he said, ‘shall I, shall Love itself destroy?’”<br /></span>
</div>
<hr />
<p class="author"><span class="smcap">C. F. Keary.</span></p>
</div>

<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5" id="Footnote_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a>
Elia.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6" id="Footnote_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a>
Unless indeed we are to except a figure upon the Ephesian drum (Artemisium) now in
the British Museum, which some have imagined to represent Thanatos.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7" id="Footnote_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a>
Hel is from the Icl. <i>helja</i> “to conceal.”</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8" id="Footnote_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a>
Isaiah xxxviii. 18, 19; cf. also Genesis xxxvii. 35; 1 Samuel xxviii. 19. Sheol is misrendered
“grave” in our version. It means the place of the dead, not of bodies only.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9" id="Footnote_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a>
The fact that the sun dies every day militates against his claim to the rank of a god:
otherwise he would probably always receive the greatest meed of worship. As it is, he is
often worshipped rather as a hero or demigod than a true immortal.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10" id="Footnote_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a>
Fick. “Verg. Wörterbuch der I.-G. Sp.” s.v. <i>mara</i>.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11" id="Footnote_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a>
Hesperides. They are, however, called the daughters of Night by Hesiod and others.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12" id="Footnote_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a>
<span class="greek" title="Pontos">Πόντος</span> is from the same root as the Skr. <i>patha</i>, a <i>path</i>, <i>pfad</i>, &amp;c. One might suppose
from this that the Greeks were the first adventurers upon the deep waters. While the other
Aryan folks called the sea “a death,” they called it a “road.”</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13" id="Footnote_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a>
There can be no doubt that the cosmology of the Eddas is to some extent infected by
the source from which we derive it. The picture of earth, with its mountain Asgard and its
surrounding sea, is nearly exactly the picture of Iceland.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14" id="Footnote_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a>
So Poseidôn, the god of the sea, is the earth-shaker; earthquakes being apparently
attributed to the water under the earth.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15" id="Footnote_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a>
Weber in Chambr., 1020.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16" id="Footnote_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a>
“The sounding,” from <i>gialla</i>, to sound (yell).</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17" id="Footnote_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a>
Chaucer.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18" id="Footnote_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a>
<span class="greek" title="Kirkos">Κίρκος</span> (whence <span class="greek" title="Kirkê">Κίρκη</span>)
is given as both hawk and wolf in L. &amp; S. It is most likely
from a root <i>krik</i>, meaning to make a grating sound, and therefore probably applied originally
to the bird (cf. our nightjar). The Latin <i>quercus</i> seems to be from the same root—from its
rustling? We may compare Circe with Charôn, which means “an eagle.”</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19" id="Footnote_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a>
From <span class="greek" title="scheros">σχερός</span>.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20" id="Footnote_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a>
Od. vi. 204, <i>sqq.</i></p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21" id="Footnote_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a>
“Earthly Paradise.”</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22" id="Footnote_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a>
Od. viii. 562.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23" id="Footnote_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a>
Justin Martyr identifies the gardens of Alcinoüs with Paradise. “Cohort. ad Græc.” xxix.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24" id="Footnote_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a>
Od. xiii. 79, 88.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25" id="Footnote_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a>
“Rheinisches Museum für Philologie,” vol. i. N.S. p. 219. <i>Die Homerische Phäaken.</i></p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26" id="Footnote_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a>
Hermödr (heer-muth, kriegsmuth) was originally one of the names of Odin, and therefore
originally the wind. We easily see the connection between the rushing wind, and the
battle’s rage. Hermes is likewise the wind, and means “the rusher” (<span class="greek" title="hormaô">ὁρμάω</span>, and cf.
Sârameyas of the Vedas).</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27" id="Footnote_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a>
Edda Snorra, Dæmisaga, 49.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28" id="Footnote_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a>
Procopius, Bel. Goth. iv. The wall identifies the island with Britain.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29" id="Footnote_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a>
The Iranian religion, as it has come down to us, is the historical one founded by Zarathustra,
who swept away most of the traces of the old Aryan faith. There is difficulty,
therefore, in obtaining the evidence of a belief which was shared by the old Persians.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30" id="Footnote_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a>
</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0"><span class="greek" title="kad' d' epes' en koniêsi makôn, apo d' eptato thymos.">κὰδ’ δ’ ἔπεσ’ ἐν κόνιῃσι μακὼν, ἀπὸ δ’ ἔπτατο θυμός.</span>—Od. x. 163.<br /></span>
</div><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0"><span class="greek" title="oute tis, oun moi nousos epêlythen, hête malista">οὔτε τίς, οὖν μόι νοῦσος ἐπήλυθεν, ἥτε μάλιστα</span><br /></span>
<span class="i0"><span class="greek" title="têkedoni stygerê meleôn exeiletô thymon.">τηκεδόνι στυγερῇ μελέων ἐξείλετο θυμόν.</span>—Od. xi. 200.<br /></span>
</div>
</div>
</div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31" id="Footnote_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a>
We are here speaking of beliefs which sprang originally from the days of burial in the
earth. Of these were all that class which included the journey of the soul.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32" id="Footnote_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a>
V<i>r</i>hadâra<i>n</i>ayaka. Ed. Pol. iii 4-7.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33" id="Footnote_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a>
Fouque.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34" id="Footnote_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a>
Sale’s Koran, Introd. p. 91. The Persian bridge was called Chinvat.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35" id="Footnote_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a>
See Edda den Eldra, Grimnismâl 44, and Edda Snorra, D. 15. That Bifröst did not
tremble through weakness we may gather from the fact that it is the “best of bridges,”
“the strongest of all bridges” (Simrock, D.M. 28), and that it will only be broken at the
day of judgment.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36" id="Footnote_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a>
By E. Keary: <i>Evening Hours</i>, vol. iii.</p></div>
</div>

<hr />

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span></p>

<h2>MR. MACVEY NAPIER AND THE EDINBURGH REVIEWERS.</h2>

<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Selection from the Correspondence of the late Macvey
Napier, Esq.</i> Edited by his son, <span class="smcap">Macvey Napier</span>.
London: Macmillan &amp; Co.</p></div>

<p>Mr. Macvey Napier, who succeeded Francis Jeffrey in the
editorship of the great Whig Review, had, of course, a perfect
right to preserve the letters which are published in this volume, and to
study them in private as much as he pleased. Indeed, for anything
that appears to the contrary in the “Introduction” by his son, the present
Mr. Macvey Napier, they may have been bequeathed by the original
recipient with instructions that they should some day be published. An
edition, privately circulated a short time ago, led to “representations
that a correspondence of so much interest ought to be made more
accessible,” and the present volume is the result; but it might be maintained
that the writers of such letters would, if they could have been
consulted, have objected to their publication; and that to send them
forth to the world in all their nakedness was, at all events, not a
delicate or magnanimous thing to do. “Much might be said on both
sides.” Paley, in his chapter on the original character of the
Christian Morality, remarked that though a thousand cases might be
supposed in which the use of the golden rule might mislead a person,
it was impossible in fact to light on such a case. That was a hazardous
observation, for the truth is that when we once get beyond elementary
conditions of being and doing, we find human beings differ so very
widely, and in such utterly incalculable ways, that it is in vain to poll
the monitor in the breast on questions that do in fact arise daily—five
hundred in a thousand will vote one way, and five hundred in another.
“How would you like it yourself?” is a question that elicits the most
discordant replies. I have a very positive feeling that I should have
left many of these letters in the portfolio, or put them into the fire;
but when I look about me for a standard which I could take in my
hand to Mr. Napier, I am baffled—he might produce one of his own
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>
that would silence me on the spot. And when one has taken up a book
to comment upon it with as little reserve as may be, it seems idle, if
not Irish, to begin by saying that the most amusing or most fertile things
in it ought never to have seen the light.</p>

<p>This point may recur before we have done; and in the meantime it
should be remarked that nothing very momentous, either to the honour or
the disgrace of human nature in general, or literary human nature in
particular, can be extracted from this correspondence. A late essayist
used to tell a true anecdote of a distinguished statesman who had lived
many years and seen as many changes as Ulysses. A friend asked
him something like this: “Well, now, you have had a great deal to
do with mankind, and you have outlived the heats and prejudices of
youth; what do you think of men in general?” And the veteran
replied: “Oh, I like them—very good fellows; but”—and here we
shall mollify his language a little—“but condemnably vain, you
know.” And really that is about the worst thing you can find it in
your heart to say of literary men after running through these letters—“very
good fellows, but very vain, you know.”</p>

<p>Another point which lies less near the surface, and has at least the
look of novelty, would perhaps be this. It is the most frequent and
most voluminous of the writers who unconsciously tell us the most about
themselves; and who, with the pleasing exception of Jeffrey, show us
the most of their unamiable sides. But there is comfort for impulsive
people in the fact that it is not always the most self-controlled and
inoffensive of the writers who win upon us. The Brougham-Macaulay
feud runs sprawling through these pages till we are tired of it; and
some of poor Brougham’s letters are downright venomous. But the
total absence of disguise and the blundering boyish inconsistency
disarm us. Taking the letters one by one, the moral superiority is
with Macaulay on Brougham as against Brougham on Macaulay, but
taking the correspondence in the lump, it is something like Charles
Surface against Joseph Surface, in another line—only, of course, there
is no hypocrisy. While you come to feel for Brougham in his spluttering
rages, you feel also that Macaulay, in his too-admirable self-continence,
can do very well without your compassion, whatever he may have to
complain of. It is easy to discern that Brougham honestly believed in
his own superiority to the young rival who outshone him, and yet that
he was inwardly tormented. Macaulay’s forbearance was of the kind
<i>qui coûte si peu au gens heureux</i>. The editor, Mr. Napier, was, we may
conjecture, the greatest sufferer of the three. Much was owed to
Brougham as a man of enormous intellectual force; to which, apart from
his past services, great respect was due: but Macaulay was by far the
best writer, and (to employ a bull which is common enough) incomparably
the most attractive contributor. The strength of his hold
upon the Review and its editor is apparent on every tenth page of the
book, and comes out forcibly enough in a letter from Sir James Stephen
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>
to Mr. Napier. Mr. Napier had written to Sir James, expressing some
delicate surprise that no article from his pen had reached the Review
for a long time. Sir James excuses himself in this fashion:—</p>

<div class="blockquot"><p>“I know that many of your contributors must be importunate for a place;
that you must be fencing and compromising at a weary rate; that there are
many interests of the passing day which you could not overlook; and that we
should all have growled like so many fasting bears if denied the regular return
of the Macaulay diet, to which we have been so long accustomed.”</p></div>

<p>Sir James was an exceedingly busy man, and he was not professedly
a man of letters like Macaulay; but we may, if we like, read between
the lines in these excuses and find a little pique there, as well as a just
sense of an editor’s difficulties.</p>

<p>Another point which lies broadly and prominently upon the surface
in these letters is a very unpleasant one. It is scarcely credible how
much dull conceit and sheer ignorant arbitrariness there often is in the
minds of able and cultivated men. It does not seem even to occur to them
that their own range may be limited, and their judgments upon many
(or even a few) topics not worth ink or breath. It should hardly be
offensive to an ordinary man to be told, or at least to find it tacitly
assumed, that he could not have invented fluxions, painted like Rembrandt,
or sung like Pindar. Why, then, should it be difficult for any cultivated
specialist, of more than ordinary faculties, to make the reflection
that he must be deficient in some direction or other? Yet we find in
practice that it is not only difficult, but impossible, in the majority of
cases. Mr. Napier seems to have invited, or at all events not to have
repelled, free criticisms on his Review from the contributors in general,
and the outcome is little short of appalling. If ever there was an able
man it was Mr. Senior, yet these are the terms in which he allows
himself to speak of an article on Christopher North—or rather of
Christopher North himself:—“The article on Christopher North is my
abomination. I think him one of the very worst of the clever bad
writers who infest modern literature; full of bombast, affectation, conceit,
in short, of all the <i>vitia</i>, <i>tristia</i>, as well as <i>dulcia</i>. I had almost
as soon try to read Carlyle or Coleridge.” Now Mr. Senior was, of
course, entitled to dislike Christopher North, and there is plenty to be
said against him in the way of criticism; but the charge of “affectation”
is foolish, and the whole passage pitched in the most detestable
of all literary key-notes. John Wilson was a man of genius, whose
personal likings and rampant animal spirits led him most mournfully
astray. He was wanting also in love of truth for its own sake; but
he was as much superior to Mr. Senior as Shakspeare was to <i>him</i>.
And the addition about Carlyle or Coleridge—<i>or</i> Coleridge!—is just
the gratuitous insolence of one-eyed dulness. There is enough and to
spare of blame ready in any balanced mind for either of these great
writers, but they can do without the admiration of wooden-headed
prigs, however able. The point, however, is that it never dawns upon
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>
the mind of even so clever and cultivated a man as Mr. Senior, that
his head may have gaps in it.</p>

<p>Another instance to the same purport may be selected from a letter
from Mr. Edwin Atherstone, the poet—for it would perhaps be hard
and grudging to deny him the title, since he found an audience, and I
have a vague recollection of having once read verses of his about
Nineveh or Babylon which had in them power of the picturesque-meditative
order. Now, this is the way in which Mr. Edwin Atherstone
speaks of Dr. Thomas Brown, the metaphysician:—“For myself, I
know not a writer, with the exception of Shakspeare, Milton, Homer,
and Scott, from whom I have derived such high delight as from Dr.
Brown.”</p>

<p>Was ever such a category put on paper before? It is as if a man
should say his favourite musical instruments were the organ, the harp,
the trumpet, the violin, and the sewing-machine. Brown was one of
the most readable of metaphysicians; he made some acute hits, and
he wrote elegant verses; but his position in Mr. Atherstone’s list is as
inexplicably quaint as that of “Burke, commonly called the Sublime,”
in the epitaph on the lady who “painted in water-colours,” and “was
first cousin to Lady Jones.”</p>

<p>The worst examples of all, however, come from the letters of Francis
Jeffrey himself. Jeffrey has been underrated, and he was a most amiable
man; but some of the verdicts he thought fit to pronounce upon
articles in the <i>Edinburgh</i>, when edited by Mr. Napier, are <i>saugrenus</i>.
In one case he is about suggesting a contributor, to deal with a certain
topic, and is so polite as to say that the name of Mr. John Stuart Mill
had struck him:—“I once thought of John Mill, but there are reasons
against him too, independent of his great unreadable book and its
elaborate demonstrations of axioms and truisms.”</p>

<p>There might be weighty “reasons against” Mr. Mill, but what his
“Logic” could have to do with the question is not clear. It never
seems to have crossed Jeffrey’s mind that he <i>might</i> be totally disqualified
for forming an opinion of a book like that; and, having called it
“unreadable” (though to a reader with any natural bent towards such
matters it is deeply interesting), he actually puts forward the fact that
Mill had written it as a reason against his being entrusted with the
treatment of a political topic in a Whig Review. Editors are human,
and the editorial position is a very troublesome one. An editor may
lose his head, as an overworked wine-taster may lose his palate. In a
word, allowances must be made; but, after a disclosure or two like this,
it is difficult not to conclude that the Review owed no more of its
success to its former editor than it might have owed to any intelligent
clerk. But we cannot let Jeffrey go yet. The following passage
relates to an article on Victor Cousin:—</p>

<div class="blockquot"><p>“Cousin I pronounce beyond all doubt the most unreadable thing that ever
appeared in the <i>Review</i>. The only chance is, that gentle readers may take it to
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>
be very profound, and conclude that the fault is in their want of understanding.
But I am not disposed to agree with them. It is ten times more <i>mystical</i> than
anything my friend Carlyle ever wrote, and not half so agreeably written. It is
nothing to the purpose that he does not agree with the worst part of the mysticism,
for he affects to understand it, and to explain it, and to think it very
ingenious and respectable, and it is mere gibberish. He may possibly be a clever
man. There are even indications of that in his paper, but he is not a <i>very</i>
clever man, nor of much power; and beyond all question he is not a good writer
on such subjects. If you ever admit such a disquisition again, order your
operator to instance and illustrate all his propositions by cases or examples,
and to reason and explain with reference to these. This is a sure test of sheer
nonsense, and moreover an infinite resource for the explication of obscure truth,
if there be any such thing.”</p></div>

<p>Now, the writer of the article in question was Sir William Hamilton.
“He may possibly be a clever man, but beyond all question he is not a
good writer on such subjects.” So much for Jeffrey.</p>

<div class="poem">
<span class="i0">“Nec sibi cœnarum quivis temere arroget artem,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Non prius exacta tenui ratione saporum.”<br /></span>
</div>

<p>Poor Mr. Carlyle is again dragged in, and Sir William is pronounced
“ten times more <i>mystical</i>” than he—“mystical” in italics. When a
writer, using the word mystical opprobriously, prints it in italics, it is
usually safe to decide that he knows nothing of metaphysics. The
concluding sentences are instructive examples of editorial self-confidence:
“If ever you admit such a disquisition again, <i>order your operator to</i>” do
so-and-so. Thus, the treatment of Mill and Hamilton being equally
ignorant and inept, there is no escape for the ex-editor. Both verdicts
were after the too-celebrated “this-will-never-do” manner, and that
is all.</p>

<p>In the communications from literary men there are some fine
instances of just self-consciousness. Tom Campbell writes, with great
warmth and alertness, to promise an article upon a new work about the
Nerves; but shortly afterwards writes again, candidly confessing that he
had found, upon looking again at the work, that his aptitude for scientific
detail was not great enough to enable him to do justice to the subject.
A letter from William Hazlitt is so striking, both for its truthfulness
and its clear-headedness, as to deserve quoting in full. He had been
written to by Mr. Napier for some contributions to the <i>Encyclopædia
Britannica</i>, and he replies, from his well-known retreat at Winterslow
Hut, in these terms:—</p>

<div class="blockquot"><p>“I am sorry to be obliged, from want of health and a number of other engagements,
which I am little able to perform, to decline the flattering offer you make
me. I am also afraid that I should not be able to do the article in question, or
yourself, justice, for I am not only without books, but without knowledge of
what books are necessary to be consulted on the subject. To get up an article
in a Review on any subject of general literature is quite as much as I can do
without exposing myself. The object of an Encyclopædia is, I take it, to
condense and combine all the facts relating to a subject, and all the theories of
any consequence already known or advanced. Now, where the business of such
a work ends, is just where I begin—that is, I might perhaps throw in an idle
speculation or two of my own, not contained in former accounts of the subject,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>
and which would have very little pretensions to rank as scientific. I know something
about Congreve, but nothing at all of Aristophanes, and yet I conceive that
the writer of an article on the Drama ought to be as well acquainted with the one
as the other.”</p></div>

<p>The honesty of this is quite refreshing. There is one more letter, of
a similar order, which deserves to be signalized. In August, 1843,
Macaulay, being pressed for more frequent contributions, writes from
the Albany that he can promise, at the very utmost, no more than two
articles in a year:—</p>

<div class="blockquot"><p>“I ought to give my whole leisure to my History; and I fear that if I suffer
myself to be diverted from that design as I have done, I shall, like poor Mackintosh,
leave behind me the character of a man who would have done something if
he had concentrated his powers instead of frittering them away. There are
people who can carry on twenty works at a time. Southey would write the
history of Brazil before breakfast, an ode after breakfast, then the history of the
Peninsular War till dinner, and an article for the <i>Quarterly Review</i> in the
evening. But I am of a different temper. I never write so as to please myself
until my subject has for the time driven away every other out of my head.
When I turn from one work to another a great deal of time is lost in the mere
transition. I must not go on dawdling and reproaching myself all my life.”</p></div>

<p>There is something melancholy in this, admirable as it is. Macaulay
had begun to watch the shadow on the dial too closely to permit him
to do much miscellaneous work with an easy mind. There is an important
lesson for men of letters in the sentence,—“When I turn from
one work to another, a great deal of time is lost in the mere transition.”
Here lies the great difference between serious literary work and that
of ordinary business, where the mind is solicited by one thing after
another in rapid succession. In the first case, time and energy have
to be expended in evolving from within a fresh impulse for every topic.
The most readable writings of Southey are those which he produced
fragment by fragment, on topics for which little renewal of impulse
was required. To write a great poem in scraps, all by the clock, was a
task which only a very conceited and rather wooden man would have
attempted; and the result we know, though there are fine things in
Southey’s longer poems. A powerful passage by Cardinal Newman on
the difficulties of literary work is almost too well known to bear
quoting, but a living poet, Mrs. Augusta Webster, has put the case so
fairly that Macaulay’s shade—which is, of course, a shade that reads
everything—may be gratified by seeing in a handy way a few of her
sentences:—</p>

<div class="blockquot"><p>“Occupations of study, scientific research, literary production—of brain-work
of any kind that is carried on in the worker’s private home with no visible
reminder of customer or client—are taken to be such as can lightly be done at
one time as well as another, and resumed after no matter what interruptions,
like a lady’s embroidery, which she can take up again at the very stitch she left
her needle in. Professions of this sort not only admit, but in many instances
require, considerable variation in the amount of daily time directly bestowed
on them,—<i>directly</i>, for the true student is not at his work only when he is
ostensibly employed, but whenever and wherever he may have his head to himself,—and
there is no measure of visible quantity for the more or less results of
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>
application.... The literary man probably fares the worst of all. He is
not merely not protected by the manual part of his processes, but it is his
danger. It is so easy—what anybody can do at any time!... Of course
the simple fact is that it is more difficult for this class of persons to practise their
vocations under the drawback of perpetual breaks, actual and (what comes to
nearly the same thing) expected, than it is for ‘business men.’ Let the attention
of the solicitor, for instance, busied on the points of an intricate case, be
perforce diverted to another matter, there is lost from that case just the time
diverted, and a little extra to allow for the mind which returns to any interrupted
course of thought, never returning to it exactly at the point at which it
was forced to leave it. But there are the recorded facts; the direct conclusions
to be drawn remain unaltered; nothing has disappeared, nothing has lost its
identity. But suppose, let us say, a dramatist, devising his crisis after hours,
perhaps days, of gradual growth, to the moment when he sees it before him as a
reality.... Force his attention away, and he has lost, not merely the time
he needed to complete a spell of works, with something over for the difficulty
of resuming, but the <i>power</i> of resuming. All has faded into a haze; and the
fruit of days, may be, has been thrown away at the ripening, for such moments
do not come twice.”</p></div>

<p>There are but few of Mr. Napier’s own letters in this volume, so that
we have only indirect means of measuring his idea of his editorial rights
or duties as against contributors. There is one case in which Macaulay
complains strongly of certain excisions, and there is another in which
he defends certain phrases of his own which appear to have offended the
taste of Mr. Napier, who found them undignified, if not slightly vulgar.
He submits of course—all the mutilated ones submit—and he says he
submits “willingly;” but all the while we can too plainly see the wry
faces he is making. Mr. Napier was, apparently, a purist in the matter
of style; but there is something almost grotesque in the spectacle of a
man of his quality correcting Macaulay. It reminds one of <i>cet imbécile
Buloz</i>.<a name="FNanchor_37" id="FNanchor_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a>
The case of Leigh Hunt was very different, for he sometimes
went to the extreme verge of decorum—quarterly review decorum, that
is—and beyond it. But we may safely conclude that Macaulay knew
much better than his editor how to turn a sentence, or when the use of
a French locution was desirable for ends of literary effect. Upon this
subject of imported phrases Mr. Napier was, it seems, very punctilious,
for with Mr. G. H. Lewes he must have had a brisk correspondence
about it. Mr. Lewes, who was then a young writer, anxious to get his
feet well planted, submits, with every possible expression of acquiescence,
one might almost say, of abject agreement; but it is easy to see that
his compliance was forced. Macaulay in his discussion of this little
matter with Napier, easily and decisively lays down the true guiding
principle:—“The first rule of all writing,—that rule to which every other
rule is subordinate,—is that the words used by the writer shall be such
as most fully and precisely convey his meaning to the great body of his
readers. All considerations about the purity and dignity of style ought
to bend to this consideration.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span></p>
<p>This, indeed, exhausts the subject; and leaves the editor only one
question to solve—namely, whether the writer whom he employs has
presumably a meaning fit to be conveyed to the readers of his periodical.
Upon that point he must use his own judgment; but it was idle for a
man like Mr. Napier to criticize the phrasing of a man like Macaulay,
who had ten thousand times his reading. For it is upon the “reading”
that the matter very largely turns. The force of a quotation or a
phrase imported from a foreign tongue depends, not upon the bare
meaning of the words, but upon the suggestiveness of certain associations.
This does not necessarily imply that the precise context is
recalled, or certain hackneyed trifles from Lucretius and Horace,
and a score of such chips in porridge, would be indecent. If it
be said that all this implies that an editor should be omniscient,
or at lowest an omnivorous reader, the reply is, that it certainly
does—unless the principle adopted in the conduct of the periodical
be the more recent one of choosing contributors largely on account
of their names, and then leaving them to answer for their own sins, if
any. One thing is clear, that if a man like Jeffrey—or like Napier—could
be shown the number of blunders he made in mutilating the
writings of his contributors, he would feel very much humiliated.
Thackeray complains very bitterly of the suppression of some of his
touches of humour, and his sufferings at the hands of a critic like
Mr. Napier (able man as he was) must have been terrible indeed.</p>

<p>The system recently adopted of having every article signed, has not
yielded the results which were predicted or expected by those who so
long struggled to get it introduced. It has led to “starring” more
outrageous and more audacious than any that was ever seen upon the
stage, and to mischief far more serious. The worst of these is the
substitution of a spurious sort of authority for the natural influence or
weight of the writing, even upon some of the most important topics
which can engage the human mind. The opinion, for example, of
a versatile politician, or traveller, or physicist, on a question of religion
or morals may be of no more value than that of the first man you meet
on passing into the streets. But it will attract attention in proportion
to the notoriety of the author, and though wise men may know that it is
weak or foolish, they may wait a long while for the chance of saying so
from any pulpit worth preaching in, because the platforms are pre-engaged;
and also because, the “organs of opinion” being bound to
live by keeping up a succession of attractive names in their pages, it
will not do to offend the owners of such names. One other result of
the recent system (not everywhere and always, of course, but generally
and most frequently) is a want of freshness in periodical literature.
This evil our American friends manage to escape; only they are
much bolder than we are, and do not stand in terror of the charge of
levity. But, as a rule, writers who are fit for starring purposes lose
freshness in a very short time; and then they do a still farther mischief
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>
by striking that key-note of second-hand thought which is so prevalent,
or at least so common in even our better literature.</p>

<p>It is amusing enough to recall the superstition of secrecy which
inspired the policy of the first Edinburgh Reviewers. Lord Jeffrey has
told us how the conspirators, Brougham, Sydney Smith, Horner, and
himself, used to meet by night in the back room of a printing-office,
and steal to their work by winding paths and back stairs, like assassins.
This was folly, though not inexcusably without rational ground or
motive, and one cannot resist the belief that the more modern plan will
work well some day, if it does not now. But the difference in the
results is not so great as might have been hoped for. Men of letters do
not now openly insult each other for differences of opinion in politics or
theology; but it is not any variation of mechanism which has made the
change, and, though less brutality of phrasing is now permitted, it
would be difficult to surpass in bitterness or unfairness some of the signed
and accredited criticism of our own day. On the whole, it comes to
this,—you can get no more out of given moral conditions than there is
in them. If public writers are clique-ish (a word to disturb Mr.
Napier in his grave, and certainly an ugly one) and unjust to each
other, it is because you cannot change the spots of the leopard. A
man who loves the truth will employ his pen conscientiously and kindly,
whether he writes anonymously or otherwise. To this it may be added
that there is something extremely quaint in one thing that we may see
taking place every week—the greater part of our newspaper writing is
still unsigned, and, considering what a hastily got-up miscellany a
newspaper necessarily is, it can hardly be otherwise. A column of
reviews in a newspaper is sometimes the work of as many hands as
there are books reviewed in it. But it might certainly have been
expected beforehand that reviewers who write without signature should
be both careful and moderate in attacking writers who sign, and who,
presumably, take more time over their work than contributors to newspapers
can generally do. Yet the newspaper columns in which quarterly
and monthly periodicals are reviewed are “too often” (we must round
the corner with the help of that commonplace) models of flippancy and
dogmatism.</p>

<p>On the whole, it is not from any mechanical changes of method
that we must expect improvement in Review literature. Of course, in
largeness, fulness, richness, and versatility the Review-writing of to-day
is immeasurably superior to that of the days when Macaulay and
Brougham fought for precedence in the <i>Edinburgh</i>. But so is the literature
reviewed—one is a big “rolling miscellany,” and so is the other.
It does not seem to some of us that, <i>other things being made equal</i>, the
literature of our modern Reviews (using the word widely) is either
superior or inferior to that of the <i>Edinburgh</i>, for example. The growth,
however, of literature generally in force, colour, range, and effectiveness, is
something astounding. We note this, or rather it overwhelms us, in
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>
turning over such a book as the Memoirs of Harriet Martineau; and
there is more than the insolence of new-fangled tastes in putting such
a question as—where would Campbell’s “Pleasures of Hope” be if it
were published to-morrow? One day when Brougham had just left
(for London) a country-house where he had been staying, Rogers, who
was a fellow-guest with him, made some such remark as this—“In
that post-chaise went away this morning, Bacon, Newton, Demosthenes,
and Solon.” It is not recorded that Rogers meant this as a joke; but
where would Brougham be after a little manipulation by Mr. Jevons or
Mr. Goldwin Smith? It would be tiresome to dwell upon this, and
wrong to suggest that the men were smaller because the outlook was
less; but this view, if anything, helps us to see the direction in which
one of our best hopes for literature must lie—namely, in its ever-increasing
volume. There will always be hostile camps, and there will
always be warriors of low <i>morale</i>, but as each camp enlarges, the
<i>average</i> pain of those who suffer from injustice or neglect will be
lessened. And this observation is by no means addressed to mere
questions of reviewing in the minor sense, but rather to literature in
the mass as representing the culture of the time.</p>

<p>Since the time when Jeffrey ruled the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>, and even
since the death of Mr. Napier, “the advertising element,” and commercial
elements in general, have played a great and new part, an increasing
part, too, in the fortunes, and thus in regulating the quality and
tendency, of current literature. One result of this state of things is
an ever-increasing tendency to compromise in the expression of opinion.
In spite of the spirit of tolerance of which we hear so much, there
was perhaps never a time in which the expression of opinion was so much
emasculated in the higher periodical literature, or in which so much
trickery of accommodated phraseology was going forward. This will
last for a long time yet—as long as periodical literature is a matter
of commercial speculation. It is an evil omen that the greatest amount
of freedom now displayed is in political and scientific discussion. It is
difficult to see where the remedy is to come from in discussions of
another kind. Probably we shall have a lesson by the cataclysmic
method before very long. There is in this volume a letter from
Brougham to Napier, in which Brougham is very angry about an indirect
disclosure of Romilly’s heterodoxy, and he goes off at a tangent
to express a doubt whether Macaulay was any better than Romilly, but
is very anxious that conventional conformity should be strictly maintained
in the Review, even to the length of concealing from the general
reader as far as possible such facts as that a man so good and “religious”
as Romilly could be a disbeliever in this, that, or the other.
We have now got beyond that; the accredited policy is in a vague
way to trump the cards of the dangerous people, and then nobody
shows his hand fairly and freely. Meanwhile, everybody feels uneasy,
from a latent sense of insincerity; and, when once the excitement is
off, the natural perception that out of nothing nothing can come,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span>
reassumes its sway. The game cannot go on in this way for ever,
though no one can foresee by what accident the lights will be blown
out, the tables thrown over, and the stakes roughly dealt with at last.</p>

<p>A great difference, as might be expected, arises from the incredible
widening of what might be called the constituencies of opinion.
Political articles of the “inspired” order do not count as they did, or
were supposed to do, in the days of “Coningsby” even, much less as
they did a decade or two sooner. The effective currents of thought
are far too numerous and far too massive to be guided—nay, too
numerous and too massive for even the most conceited of propagandists
or prophets to fancy he could calculate them. What sort of figure as
a publicist or “inspired” political writer would a man like Croker cut
at this end of the century? It must have been a dolorous day for
such as he when they first felt sure the tides were coming up which
were to sweep them and their works into oblivion, or at least into
limbo, and make successors to their function impossible in future.
We do not affirm that the present phase of change is for the best; no
theory of progress will justify statements of that kind. In fact, things
are quite bad enough; but some security against certain evils there
must be, in the fact that these are days in which it is difficult to hide
a wrong, or an error, which has an immediate sinister bearing upon
ends cherished by any school of opinion. Who on earth would now
think of calling the <i>Times</i> the Thunderer? Just when middle-aged
men of to-day were babies it was thought finely argumentative, if not
conclusive, to call the London University “Stinkomalee”—in the
interest of Church and King; but the “hard hitting” of our own time
is done in other fashion. Even if the Marquis of Salisbury were to
edit a paper he would not be able to make much out of Titus Oates.
But the allusion to that episode in another sphere of action may
remind us of the late Lord Derby, who might almost be called the last
of the old school of politicians. The mere mention of his name seems
to flash light upon the gulf we have traversed since the days when the
world was divided between a Whig organ and a Tory organ.</p>

<p>Simultaneously with the incalculable increase of devotion to science,
we have had an increase of devotion to ends held to be practical, and
this has largely governed our literature. The subject now barely hinted
at is well worth extended treatment. It is, however, no more than the
truth that there has been recently a great diminution of speculative
enthusiasm of all kinds, with a largely increased tendency to make
things pleasant for all parties. Convenience, in fact, becomes more
and more the governing factor of life; this tells upon our better literature;
and until the wind sets again from the old quarters—as it certainly
will some day—we shall feel the want of certain elements of freshness,
individuality, and moral impulse which touch us more closely than we
at first recognize in reading the old Edinburgh Reviewers.</p>

<p class="author"><span class="smcap">Matthew Browne.</span></p>

<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37" id="Footnote_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a>
One, at least, of the contributors whom Buloz tortured (Georges Sand wrote that she
wished him “<i>au diable</i>” ten times a day, only he held her purse-strings) used to date his
letters in this style:—“<i>A vingt-cinq lieues de cet imbécile Buloz.</i>”</p></div>
</div>

<hr />

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span></p>

<h2>THE SUPREME GOD IN THE INDO-EUROPEAN MYTHOLOGY.</h2>

<h4>Comparative Mythology.<a name="FNanchor_38" id="FNanchor_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a></h4>

<p>Towards the end of the last century the men of letters of Europe
were astonished to hear that in Asia, on the banks of the Ganges,
a more ancient and richer language had been found than that of Homer.
It offered in its words and forms striking analogies with the languages
of Rome and Athens. Interest once roused, systematic comparisons
were made, and comparative grammar was founded. The sphere
of comparisons widened and the group of Aryan languages was established.</p>

<p>It was thus ascertained that the languages of the Romans, of the
Greeks, of the Gauls, of the Germans, of the Lithuanians, and of the
Slavs in Europe, of the Hindoos and Persians in Asia, are made out of
the same materials and cast in the same mould; that they are only
varieties of one primitive type. The precise laws which regulated the
formation of each of these varieties were discovered, so that it is both
possible to proceed from one of these languages to the other, and to
trace all of them to the original type whence they come, to the lost
type which they reproduce. This lost type, the source of all the
idioms of nearly the whole of Europe and of a third of Asia, science has
reconstructed: with an almost absolute certainty, it has described the
grammar, drawn up the lexicon of that language, of which no direct
echo remains, not the fragment of an inscription on a broken stone, of
that language of which the life and the death are pre-historic, and
which was spoken at a period when there were as yet neither Romans,
nor Hindoos, nor Greeks, nor Persians, nor Germans, nor Celts, and
when the ancestors of all those nations were still wandering as one
tribe, one knows not where, one knows not when.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span></p>
<p>Closely following comparative grammar, almost at the same time rose
up comparative mythology, and with the ancient words awoke the gods
that they had sung, the beliefs that they had fostered. It was recognized
that if the Indo-Europeans spoke essentially the same language,
they also worshipped essentially the same gods and believed in the
same things. As comparative grammar, on hearing the sister-tongues,
caught up the echo of the mother, whose voice they repeat, so comparative
mythology, in its turn, on looking at the sister religions, has tried
to see through them the original image which they reflect. As the one
restored the words and forms of the language which lived on the lips of
the Aryans at the moment of the breaking up of the Aryan unity, the
other endeavoured to restore the gods and beliefs which lived in their
souls at the moment when, with the unity of the race, the identity of
language and belief passed away. This restoration of the pre-historic
gods and of the pre-historic beliefs is the final object of comparative
mythology, just as the reconstruction of words and forms is the final
object of comparative grammar. The object was analogous and so was
the method. It is the comparative method, which by comparing kindred
divinities and kindred beliefs, finds the original divinity and the original
belief which gave birth to them, and which are reproduced in them.
To sketch the picture of the original mythology, it is sufficient to
separate from the various derivative mythologies the essential characteristics
common to them. Every characteristic common to the secondary
religions will be legitimately referred to the primitive one, whenever it
is essential—that is to say neither borrowed from one of the kindred
religions nor due to an identical, but quite independent development. If,
for instance, the various Indo-European mythologies agree in naming
the gods <i>Daiva</i>, “the shining ones,” it follows that in the primitive
mythology, in the religion of the period of unity, they were known
already as beings of light and called thus. It is a great deal easier to
admit that the seven derived religions have faithfully repeated what has
been handed down to them from their common source, than to imagine
that once separated they have created the same conception, each one on
its side, and have clothed it with the same expression: the former
hypothesis is a simple and natural induction: the second is in reality
made up of seven hypotheses, and implies seven chances agreeing together,
seven miracles.</p>

<p>Our object in the following pages is to give a sketch of one of the
chapters of the Aryan mythology. We try to show that the religion of
the Indo-European unity recognized a Supreme God, and we try to
find the most ancient form and the earliest origin of that conception
among the Aryans, and to follow out the transformations it has undergone
in the course of ages.</p>

<h4>The Supreme God: Zeus, Jupiter, Varuna, Ahura Mazda.</h4>

<p>The Aryan Gods are not organized as a Republic: they have a king.
There is over the gods a Supreme God.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span></p>

<p>Four of the Aryan mythologies have preserved a clear and precise
notion of this conception: they are those of Greece, of Italy, of
ancient India, and of ancient Persia. This Supreme God is called Zeus
in Greece, Jupiter in Italy, Varuna in ancient India, Ahura Mazda in
ancient Persia. Let us then listen to Zeus, to Jupiter, to Varuna, and
to Ahura Mazda each in his turn.</p>

<p><i>Zeus and Jupiter.</i><a name="FNanchor_39" id="FNanchor_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a>—About
three centuries before our era a Greek poet thus addressed Zeus:—</p>

<div class="blockquot"><p>“Oh! Thou most glorious of immortals, whose names are many, for ever Almighty,
Zeus, Thou who rulest nature, directing all things according to a law,
hail! To Thee all this universe moving round the earth yields obedience,
following whither thou leadest, and submits itself to Thy rule.... So great in
Thy nature, King Supreme above all things, no work is achieved without Thee,
neither on the earth, nor in the celestial regions of ether, nor on the sea, but
those which the wicked accomplish in their folly.”</p></div>

<p>This is the Zeus of the philosophers, of the Stoics, of Cleanthes: but
he was already the Zeus of the ancient poets. Powerful, omniscient, and
just is the god of Æschylus, as that of Cleanthes: he is the king of
kings, the blessed of the blessed, the sovereign power among all powers,
the only one who is free among the gods, who is the master of the
mightiest, who is subservient to no one’s rule; above whom no one sits,
no one to whom from below he looks with awe; every word of his is
absolute; he is the God of deep thoughts, whose heart has dark and
hidden ways, impenetrable to the eye, and no scheme formed within his
mind has ever miscarried. Finally, he is the Father of Justice, Dike,
“the terrible virgin who breathes out on crime anger and death,” it is he
who from hell raises vengeance with its slow chastisement against the
bold wayward mortal. Terpander proclaims in Zeus the essence of all
things, the god who rules over everything. Archilochus sings Zeus
father, as the God who rules the heavens, who watches the guilty and
unjust actions of men, who administers chastisements to monsters, the
God who created heaven and earth. The old man of Ascra knows that
Zeus is the father of gods and of men, that his eye sees and comprehends
all things and reaches all that he wishes. In short, as far back
as the Greek Pantheon appears in the light of history, even from
Homer, Zeus towers above the nation of gods which surrounds him. He
himself proclaims, and the other gods proclaim after him, that, unrivalled
in power and strength, he is the greatest of all; the gods, at his behest,
silently bow down before him; he would hurl into the gloomy depths of
Tartarus whomsoever should dare to disobey him: he would hurl him
down into the uttermost depths of the subterranean abyss: alone
against them all, he would master them. Should they let fall from the
sky a golden chain on which all the gods and goddesses might be
suspended, they still would be powerless, however hard they might
strain to drag him from the heavens to the earth; and if it pleased
him, he could draw them up even with the earth, even with the sea,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>
and he would then fix the chain on the ridge of Olympus, and suspend
on it the whole universe; so much is he above mankind, above the gods.
Not only is he the most powerful, but also he is the wisest—the
<span class="greek" title="mêtietês">μητιέτης</span>; he is all wisdom and he is likewise all justice. It is from him
that the judges of the sons of the Achæans have received their laws:
very good, very great, he holds learned conversations with Themis (the
law) who sits at his side; prayers are his daughters, whom he avenges
for all the insults of the wicked.</p>

<p>Thus, power, wisdom, justice, belonged from all time to Zeus, to the
Zeus of Homer as well as to the Zeus of Cleanthes; to the Zeus of the
poets as to him of the philosophers, in the remotest period of paganism
as at the approach of the religion of Christ. A providential god rules
the Pantheon of the Hellenes.</p>

<p>What Zeus is in Greece, Jupiter is in Italy: the God who is above
all the gods. The identity of the two deities is so striking that the
ancients themselves, forestalling comparative mythology, recognized it
from the very first. He is the God, great and good amongst them all:
<i>Jupiter, optimus, maximus</i>.</p>

<p><i>Varuna.</i>—The most ancient of the religions of India, which the Vedas
have made known to us, has also a Zeus, whose name is
Varuna.<a name="FNanchor_40" id="FNanchor_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a></p>

<div class="blockquot"><p>“Truly admirable for grandeur are the works of Him who has separated the
two worlds and fixed their vast extent: of Him who has set in motion the high
and sublime firmament, who has spread out the heavens above and the earth
beneath.</p>

<p>“These heavens and this earth which reach so far, flowing with milk, so
beautiful in form, it is by the law of Varuna that they remain fixed, facing each
other, immortal beings with fertile seed.</p>

<p>“This Asura,<a name="FNanchor_41" id="FNanchor_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a>
who is acquainted with all things, has propped up these heavens,
he has fixed the boundaries of the earth. He is enthroned above all the worlds,
universal king; all the laws of the world are the laws of Varuna.</p>

<p>“In the bottomless abyss the king Varuna has lifted up the summit of the
celestial tree.<a name="FNanchor_42" id="FNanchor_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a>
It is the king Varuna who has traced out to the sun the broad
path he is to follow: to footless creatures he has given feet so that they may run.</p>

<p>“Those stars, which illumine the night, where were they during the day?
Infallible are the laws of Varuna: the moon kindles itself and walks through
the night.</p>

<p>“Varuna has traced out paths for the sun: he has thrown forwards the fluctuating
torrent of rivers. He has dug out the wide and rapid beds where the
waves of the days, let loose, unroll themselves in their order.</p>

<p>“He has put strength into the horse, milk into the cow, intellect into the heart,
Agni<a name="FNanchor_43" id="FNanchor_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a>
into the waters, the sun in the sky,
soma<a name="FNanchor_44" id="FNanchor_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> into the stone.</p>

<p>“The wind is thy breath, O Varuna! which roars in the atmosphere, like the
ox in the meadow. Between this earth and the sublime heaven above, all things,
O Varuna, are of thy creation.”</p></div>

<p>There is an order in nature, there is a law, a habit, a rule, <i>a Rita</i>.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>
This law, this <i>Rita</i>, it is Varuna who has established it. He is the god
of the Rita, the god of Order, the guardian of the Rita; he is the god
of efficient and stable laws; in him rest as in a rock the fixed immovable
laws.</p>

<p>Organizer of the world, he is its master. He is the first of the
Asuras, “of the lords;” he is <i>the Asura</i>, “the Lord;” he is the
sovereign of the whole world, the king of all beings, the universal king,
the independent king; no one amongst the gods dares to infringe his
laws; “it is thou, Varuna, who art the king of all.”</p>

<p>As he has omnipotence, he has omniscience too, he is “the Lord who
knows all things,” the <i>Asura viçva-vedas</i>. He is the sage who has
supreme wisdom, in whom all sciences have their centre; when the
poet wishes to praise the learning of a god, he compares it to that of
Varuna. “He knows the place of the birds which fly in the air, he
knows the ships which are sailing on the ocean, he knows the twelve
months and what they will bring forth, he knows every creature that is
born. He knows the path of the sublime wind in the heights, he knows
who sits at the sacrifice. The God of stable laws, Varuna, has taken
his place in his palace to be the universal king, the god with the
wondrous intellect. Hence, following in his mind all these marvels,
he looks around him at what has happened and what will happen.”</p>

<p>As he is the universal witness, he is also the universal judge, the
infallible judge whom nothing escapes: none can deceive him, and
from above he sees the evil done below and strikes it: he has sevenfold
bands to clasp thrice round the liar by the upper, by the middle, and
by the lower part of the body. The man, smitten by misfortune,
implores his pity, and feels that he has sinned, and that the hand which
strikes is also the hand that punishes:</p>

<div class="blockquot"><p>“I ask Thee, O Varuna, because I wish to know my fault:</p>

<p>“I come to Thee, to question Thee who knowest all things. All the sages,
with one voice, said to me, Varuna is angry with thee.</p>

<p>“What great crime have I committed, O Varuna, that thou shouldst want to
kill thy friend, thy bard. Tell me, O Lord, O infallible one, and I will then lay
my homage at thy feet.</p>

<p>“Free me from the bonds of my crime, do not sever the thread of the prayer
that I am weaving, do not deliver me over to the deaths that, at thy dictate, O
Asura, strike him who has committed a crime: send me not into the gloomy
regions far from the light.</p>

<p>“Let me pay the penalty of my faults; but let me not suffer, O King, for the
crime of others; there are so many days that have not dawned yet! Let them
dawn for us also, O Varuna!”</p></div>

<p>Such is the supreme God of the Vedic religion, an organizing God,
almighty, omniscient, and moral. The following is a Vedic hymn
which sums up with singular force the essential attributes of the
God:—</p>

<div class="blockquot"><p>“He who from on high rules this world sees every thing as if it were before
him. That which two men, seated side by side are plotting, is heard by king
Varuna, himself the third.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span></p>

<p>“This earth belongs to the king Varuna, and this sky, these two sublime worlds with their remote limits; the two
seas<a name="FNanchor_45" id="FNanchor_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a>
are the belly of Varuna, and he rests also even in this small pool of water.</p>

<p>“He who should leap over the sky and beyond it, would not escape the king
Varuna: he has his spies, the spies of the heavens, who go through the world;
he has his thousand eyes which look on the earth.</p>

<p>“The king Varuna sees everything, all that which is between the two worlds
and beyond them: he reckons the winking of the eye of all creatures:</p>

<p>“The world is in his hand like the dice in the hand of the gamester.</p>

<p>“Let thy sevenfold bands, O Varuna, let thy bands of wrath which are thrice
linked together, let them enfold the man with a lying tongue, let them leave free
the man with a truthful tongue!”</p></div>

<p><i>Ahura Mazda.</i><a name="FNanchor_46" id="FNanchor_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a>—Ancient
Persia opposes to Zeus, to Jupiter, to Varuna, her Ormazd or Ahura
Mazda.<a name="FNanchor_47" id="FNanchor_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a>
“It is through me,” he said to his prophet, Zoroaster, “that the firmament, with its distant
boundaries, hewn from the sparkling ruby, subsists without pillars to
rest upon; it is through me that the earth, through me that the sun,
the moon, and the stars take their radiant course through the
atmosphere; it was I who formed the seeds in such a manner that,
when sown in the earth, they should grow, spring up, and appear on
the surface; it was I who traced their veins in every species of plants,
who in all beings put the fire of life which does not consume them; it
is I who in the maternal womb produce the new-born child, who form
the limbs, the skin, the nails, the blood, the feet, the ears; it was I who
gave the water feet to run; it was I who made the clouds, which carry
the water to the world,” &amp;c. This development, taken from a recent
book of the Ghebers, the Bundahish, is to be found entire, in the very
first words of their oldest and holiest book, the Avesta: “I proclaim
and worship Ahura Mazda, the <i>Creator</i>.” As far as history can be
traced, he was already what he is now. Near the ruins of the ancient
Ecbatana, the traveller may read, on the red granite of the mountain of
Alvand, these words, which were engraved by the hand of Darius, the
king of kings, nearly five centuries before the birth of Christ:—</p>

<div class="poem">
<span class="i0">“A powerful God is Aurâmazda!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">’Twas he who made this earth here below!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">’Twas he who made that heaven above!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">’Twas he who made man!”<br /></span>
</div>

<p>This God, who made the world, rules it. He is the sovereign of the
universe, the <i>Ahura</i>,<a name="FNanchor_48" id="FNanchor_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a>
“the Lord.” “He is a powerful god,” exclaims
Xerxes; “he is the greatest of all the gods.” It is to his favour that
Darius, inscribing upon the rock of Behistun the narrative of his
nineteen victories, ascribes both his elevation and his triumphs. It is
to his supreme care that he confides Persia: “This country of
Persia, which Aurâmazda has given me, this beautiful country, beautiful
in horses, beautiful in men, by the grace of Aurâmazda, and through
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span>
me, king Darayavus, has nothing to fear from any enemy. May
Aurâmazda and the gods of the nation bring me their help! May
Aurâmazda protect this country from hostile armies, from barrenness
and evil! May this country never be invaded by the stranger, nor by
hostile armies, nor by barrenness, nor by evil! This is the favour
which I implore from Aurâmazda and the gods of the nation!”</p>

<p>This world which he has organized is a work of intelligence; by his
wisdom it began, and by his wisdom it will end. He is the mind which
knows all things, and it is to him that the sage appeals in order to
penetrate the mysteries of the world.</p>

<div class="blockquot"><p>“Reveal to me the truth, O Ahura! What was the beginning of the good
creation?</p>

<p>“Who is the father, who, at the beginning of time, begat Order?</p>

<p>“Who has traced for the sun and the stars the paths that they must follow?</p>

<p>“Who makes the moon increase and decrease?</p>

<p>“O Ahura! I would learn those mysteries and many more!</p>

<p>“Who has fixed the earth and the immovable stars to establish them firmly,
so that they might not fall? Who has fixed the waters and the trees?</p>

<p>“Who has directed the rapid course of the wind and of the clouds? What
skilful artist has made the light and the darkness?</p>

<p>“What skilful workman has made sleep and wakefulness? Through whom have
we dawn, noon, and night? From whom do they learn the law which is traced
out for them? Who endeared the son to his father so that he should train
him? Those are the things that I wish to ask Thee, O Mazda, O beneficent
Spirit, O Creator of all things!”</p></div>

<p>In his omniscience are embraced all human actions. He watches
over all things, and is far-seeing, and never sleeping. He is the
infallible one; “it is impossible to deceive him, the Ahura, who knows
all things.” He sees man, and judges and chastises him, if he has not
followed his law, for from him comes the law of man, as well as the
law of the world; from him comes the science supreme among all other
sciences, that of duty, the knowledge of those things we ought to think,
say, and do, and of those things we ought neither to think, nor say, nor
do. To the man who has prayed well, thought, spoken, and acted well,
he opens his resplendent paradise; he opens hell to him who has not
prayed and who has thought, spoken, and done evil.</p>

<h4>The Supreme God, the God of Heaven.</h4>

<p>Thus the Aryans of Greece, of Italy, of India, and of Persia agree in
giving the highest place in their Pantheon to a supreme God who rules
the world and who has founded order, a God sovereign, omniscient, and
moral. Has this identical conception been formed in each of these
cases by four independent creations, or is it a common inheritance from
the Indo-European religion, and did the Aryan ancestors of the Greeks, of
the Latins, of the Hindoos, and of the Persians already know a supreme
God, an organizing, a sovereign, an omniscient, a moral God?</p>

<p>Although the latter hypothesis is more simple and more probable
than the former, it cannot, however, be taken at once as certain;
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>
because an abstract and logical conception of this kind may very well
have developed itself at the same time among several nations, in an
identical and independent manner. To whomsoever looks upon it at
any time and in any place, the world can reveal the existence of a
Supreme maker: Socrates is not the disciple of the psalmist; yet the
heavens reveal to him, as to the Hebrew poet, the glory of the Lord.
But if it be found that the abstract conception is closely connected
with a naturalistic and material conception, and that the latter is
identical in the four religions, as it is known, on the other hand, that
these four religions have a common past, the hypothesis that this abstract
conception is a heritage of this past, and not a creation of the
present, may rise to a certainty.</p>

<p>Now, these Gods who organize the world, rule it and watch over it;
this Zeus, this Jupiter, this Varuna, this Ahura Mazda are not the personifications
of a simple abstract conception; they emerge from a former
naturalism, from which they are not yet quite detached; they commenced
by being gods of the heavens.</p>

<p>Zeus and Jupiter have never ceased to be gods of the heavens, and
to be conscious of it. When the world was shared among the gods,
“Zeus received the boundless sky in the ether and the clouds for his
share.” It is as the God of heaven that sometimes he shines luminous,
calm, and pure, enthroned in the ethereal splendour, and that sometimes
he becomes gloomy and gathers clouds (<span class="greek" title="nephelêgeretês">νεφεληγερέτης</span>), causing the rain
to fall from heaven (<span class="greek" title="ombrios">ὄμβριος</span>,
<span class="greek" title="hyetios">ὑέτιος</span>), hurling upon the earth the eddy of
fierce winds, drawing forth the hurricane from the summit of the ether,
brandishing the lightning and the thunderbolt
(<span class="greek" title="keraunios">κεραύνιος</span>,
<span class="greek" title="astrapaios">ἀστραπαῖος</span>).
This is why the thunderbolt is his weapon, his attribute, “the thunderbolt
with its never-tiring foot,” which he hurls in the heights; why he rolls
on a resounding chariot, brandishing in his hand the fiery trident, or
dashing it on the wings of the eagle, or on Pegasus, the aërial steed of
the lightning. This is why he is the husband of Dêmêter, “the mother
Earth,” whom he impregnates with his torrents of rain; this is why he
sent forth, from his brow according to some, from his belly according
to others, from the clouds according to the Cretan legend, Athênê, the
resplendent goddess with the penetrating glance, who came forth, shaking
golden weapons, with a cry which made heaven and earth resound, as
she is the incarnation of the stormy light which breaks forth from the
brow of heaven, from the belly of heaven, from the bosom of the cloud,
filling space with its splendour and with the crash of its stormy birth.
Lastly, the very name of Zeus (genitive <i>Dios</i>, formerly <i>Divos</i>) is, in
conformity with the laws of Greek phonetics, the literal representative
of the Sanscrit Dyaus, heaven (genitive <i>Divas</i>), and the union of
<span class="greek" title="Zeus patêr">Ζεὺς πατήρ</span> with
<span class="greek" title="Dêmêtêr">Δημήτηρ</span> is the exact counterpart of the Vedic union of
<i>Dyaus pitar</i> with <i>Prithivî mâtar</i>, of the Heaven-Father with Earth-Mother.
The word <span class="greek" title="Zeus">Ζεύς</span> is an ancient synonym
of <span class="greek" title="Ouranos">Οὐρανός</span>, which
became obsolete as a common noun; still, in a certain number of
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>
expressions, it retains something of its former meaning. Thus it is,
when the Earth prays Zeus to let rain fall upon her; when the Athenian
in praying exclaims: “O dear Zeus, rain thou on the field of the
Athenians and on the plains”—“Zeus has rained the whole night,” says
Homer: <span class="greek" title="hye Zeus pannychos">ὕε Ζεὺς πάννυχος</span>. In all these expressions Zeus may be literally
translated as a common noun, <i>sky</i>.</p>

<p>Jupiter, identical with Zeus in his functions, is identical with him in
his material attributes.</p>

<p>The word Jûpiter, or better Jup-piter, is for Jus-piter, composed of
<i>pater</i> and of <i>Jus</i>, the Latin contraction of the Sanscrit <i>Dyaus</i>, of the
Greek <span class="greek" title="Zeus">Ζεύς</span>: Juppiter is then the exact
equivalent of <span class="greek" title="Zeus patêr">Ζεὺς πατήρ</span>, and the
word has even preserved more strongly than Zeus the sense of its early
meaning; <i>sub Jove</i> signifies “under the heavens;” the hunter awaits
the marsian boar, heedless of the cold or snow, <i>sub Jove frigido</i>, “under
the cold Jupiter, under the cold sky.” Dyaus is also in Latin, as it is
in Sanscrit, the name of the brilliant sky: “Behold,” exclaims old
Ennius, “above thy head this luminous space which all invoke under
the name of Jupiter:”</p>

<div class="poem">
<span class="i0">“Aspice hoc sublime candens quem invocant omnes Jovem.”<br /></span>
</div>

<p>Varuna, like his European brethren, has been, and is yet, a material
god, and a material god of the same kind, a god of heaven. This is
why the sun is his eye, why the sun, “the beautiful bird which
flies in the firmament,” is “his golden-winged
messenger;”<a name="FNanchor_49" id="FNanchor_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> why the
celestial rivers flow in the hollow of his mouth, as in the hollow of a
reed; why everywhere visible, by turns full of light and of darkness, by
turns he infolds himself in the night, and irradiates the dawns, and by
turns clothes himself in the white garments and in the black ones. Like
Zeus, and from the same cause, he gathers together the clouds, he turns
the sack that contains the rains, and lets it loose upside down on the
two worlds; he inundates the heaven and the earth, he clothes the
mountains with a watery garb, and his blood-red eyes unceasingly
furrow the watery dwelling with their twinkling flashes. As Zeus is
the father of Athênê, he is the father of Atharvan, “the Fire-God,” of
Bhrigu, “the Thunderer”—that is to say, of Agni, of the lightning.
Agni himself is brought forth “from his belly in the waters,” like
a male Athênê. Finally, like Zeus, like Jupiter, he bears in his very
name the expression of what he is; and the Sanscrit Varuna is the exact
phonetic representative of <span class="greek" title="Ouranos">Οὐρανός</span>, sky.</p>

<p>In fine, the sovereign god of Persia, notwithstanding the character of
profound abstraction which he has acquired and which is reflected in his
name Ahura Mazda, “the omniscient Lord,” can himself be recognized
as a god of the heavens. The ancient formulæ of the litanies still
show that he is luminous and corporeal; they invoke the creator Ahura
Mazda, resplendent, very great, very beautiful, corporeally beautiful;
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>
white, luminous, seen from afar; they invoke the entire body of Ahura
Mazda, the body of Ahura which is the greatest of bodies; they say
that the sun is his eye, and that the sky is the garment embroidered
with stars with which he arrays himself; lastly, the most abstract of the
Aryan gods has preserved a trait which shows him more closely tied
than the others to the material world from which they have freed themselves;
he is called “the most solid of the gods,” because “he has for
clothing the very solid stone of the sky.” Like Varuna, like Zeus,
the lightning is in his hands, “the molten brass which he causes to flow
down on the two worlds;” like them he is the father of the god of
lightning, Atar. Lastly, the most ancient historical evidence confirms
the inductions of mythology, as at the very time when the Achæmenian
kings proclaim the sovereignty of Aurâmazda, Herodotus wrote: “The Persians offer up sacrifices to
Zeus,<a name="FNanchor_50" id="FNanchor_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a>
going up on the highest summit of the mountains, as they call <i>Zeus the entire orb of the sky</i>.”</p>

<p>Thus the supreme gods of the four great religions of Greece, of Italy,
of India, and of Persia, are at the same time, or have begun by being
gods of the skies. By the side of these four, Svarogu, the god of
the ancient pagan Slavs, should no doubt equally be placed. Like Zeus,
like Jupiter, like Varuna, like Ahura Mazda, he is the master of the
universe, the gods are his children, and it is from him that they have
received their functions; like them he is the god of the heavens, he is the
thunderer, and like them he is the father of the Fire, Svarojitchi, “the
son of heaven.”<a name="FNanchor_51" id="FNanchor_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a></p>

<h4>His Origin.<a name="FNanchor_52" id="FNanchor_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a></h4>

<p>How did the god of the heavens become the organizing god, the
supreme God, the moral God? How was the abstract conception
grafted on the naturalistic conception? What is the connection between
his material attribute and his abstract function? The Vedas give the
solution of this problem.</p>

<p>As far as the eye can reach, it can never reach beyond the sky;
whatever is, is under the immense vault; all that which is born and
dies, is born and dies within its bounds. Now, whatever takes place in
it, takes place according to an immutable law. The dawn has never
failed to appear at her appointed place in the morning, never forgotten
where she is to appear again, nor the moment at which she is to
reanimate the world. Darkness and light know their appointed hour,
and always at the desired moment “the black One has given way to
the white.” Linked together by the same chain in the endless path
open before them, they follow their way onwards, the two immortals,
directed by a God, absorbing each other’s tints. The two fertile sisters
do not clash with one another; they never stop, dissimilar in form, but
alike in spirit. Thus run the days with their suns, the nights with
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>
their stars, season following season. The sky has always in regular
course ushered in by turn the day and the night. The moon has always
lit up at the fixed hour. The stars have always known where they should
go during the day. The rivers have always flowed into the one ocean
without making it full.</p>

<p>This universal order is either the motion of the heavens, or it
is the action of the God of heaven, according as we think of the
body or the soul, and view in the heavens the thing or the God. Thus,
in the Rig-Veda, to say “everything is <i>in</i> Varuna”—that is, “in
the heavens”—and to say “everything is <i>through</i> Varuna”—that is,
“through the heaven-God”—are one and the same thing; and in
these formulæ of the Veda, so clear in their uncertainty, theism is ever
found side by side with unconscious pantheism, of which it is only an
expression. “The three heavens and the three earths rest in Varuna,”
says a poet, and immediately afterwards, giving personality to his God:
“It is the skilful king Varuna who makes this golden disc shine in
heaven.” The wind which whistles in the atmosphere is his breath,
and all that exists from one world to the other was created by
him. “From the king Varuna come this earth below, and yonder
heaven, too, these two worlds with remote limits; the two seas are
the belly of Varuna, and he rests also even in the small pool of
water.”</p>

<p>This pantheistic theism, which makes no clear distinction between
the God of heaven and the universe over which he rules, or which is
comprised in him, penetrates Jupiter as well as Varuna. The Latin
poets offer the equivalent of the vacillating formulæ of Vedism. “The
mortals,” says Lucretius, explaining the origin of the idea of God,
“the mortals saw the regular motions of the heavens and the various
seasons of the year succeed each other in a fixed order, without being
able to discover the causes. They had, therefore, no other alternative
than to attribute all to the gods, who made everything go according to
their will, and it was in the sky that they placed the seat and domain of
the gods, because it is there that may be seen revolve the night and the
noon, the day and the gloomy planets of the night; the nocturnal
lights wandering in the sky, and the flying flames, the clouds, the sun,
the rain, the snow, the winds, the thunderbolts, the hail, the sudden
convulsions, and the great threatening
rumblings.”<a name="FNanchor_53" id="FNanchor_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a></p>

<p>This view of the heavens as the universal centre of the movements
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>
of Nature might just as well have led to pantheism as to theism. The
line of the poet: “Juppiter est quodcunque vides, quocunque moveris”—“Jupiter
is everything that thou seest, everywhere that thou movest”—does
not refer only to the Jupiter of the metaphysicians of the
Porch; it also expresses one of the aspects of the Jupiter of primitive
mythology. It was not by a deviation from his earlier nature that
Zeus was confounded with Pan; he was Pan by birth; and if the epopee
and the drama show us only a personal Zeus, it is because by their
very nature they could and should see him only under this aspect, and
had nothing to obtain from the impersonal Zeus, although in this form
he was as old as in the other. And the Orphic theologian is not quite
unfaithful to the earlier tradition of religion, when he sings of the
universal Zeus:—</p>

<div class="poem">
<span class="i0">“Zeus was the first, Zeus is the last, Zeus the thunderer;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Zeus is the head, Zeus is the middle; it is by Zeus that all things are made;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Zeus is the male, Zeus is the immortal female;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Zeus is the base of both the earth and the starry sky;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Zeus is the breath of the winds, Zeus is the jet of the unconquerable flame;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Zeus is the root of the sea, Zeus is the sun and the moon....<br /></span>
<span class="i0">The whole of this universe is stretched out within the great body of Zeus.”<br /></span>
</div>

<p>In the same manner, although Persia has in general preserved the
personality of her Supreme god, yet she suffers him, especially in the
sects, to become confounded with the Infinity of matter through which
he first revealed himself to the mind of his worshippers. After having
invoked the heavens as the body of Ahura Mazda, the most beautiful of
bodies, she placed above Ahura himself, and before him, the luminous
space, where he manifests himself, what the theologians called “the
Infinite light,” and then by a new and higher abstraction
declared <i>Space</i><a name="FNanchor_54" id="FNanchor_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a>
to have been at the beginning of the world. Between this wholly
metaphysical principle and the naturalistic principle of the primitive
religion, there is only the distance of two abstractions: Space is only
the bare form of the luminous Infinite, and the luminous Infinite, again,
is an abstraction from the Infinite and luminous sky, which was identical
with Ahura.</p>

<p>Thus, accordingly as the heavens were considered as the seat or as
the cause of things, the god of the heavens became the matter of the
world or the demiurge of the world. From the period of Aryan unity,
he was without doubt the one and the other in turn; but it is probable
that the theistic conception was more clearly defined than the other, as
it is so in the derived mythologies; it has besides deeper roots in the
human heart and human nature, which in every movement and in every
phenomenon sees a Living Cause, a Personality.</p>

<p>This god of the heavens, having organized the world, is all wisdom;
he is the skilled artisan who has regulated the motion of the worlds.
His wisdom is infinite, for of all those mysteries which man tries in
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span>
vain to fathom he has the key, he is the author. But it is not only as
the Creator of the world that he is omniscient: he knows all things,
because, being all light, he sees all things. In the naturalistic psychology
of the Aryans, to see and to know, light and knowledge, eye and
thought, are synonymous terms. With the Hindoos, Varuna is omniscient
because he is the Infinite light; because the sun is his eye;
because from the height of his palace with its pillars of red brass, his
white looks command the world; because under the golden mantle that
covers him, his thousands, his myriads of spies, active and untiring
agents, sunbeams during the day, stars during the night, search out for
him all that which exists from one world to the other, with eyes that
never sleep, never blink. And in the same way, if Zeus is the all-seeing,
the <span class="greek" title="panoptês">πανόπτης</span>, it is because his eye is the sun, this universal witness,
the infallible spy of both gods and men
(<span class="greek" title="Theôn skopon êde kai andrôn">Θεῶν σκοπὸν ἠδὲ καὶ ἀνδρῶν</span>).
The light knows the truth, it is all truth; truth is the great virtue
which the god of heaven claims; and lying is the great crime which he
punishes. In Homer, the Greek taking an oath, raises his eyes towards
the expanse of heaven and calls Zeus and the sun to witness; in Persia,
the god of heaven resembles in body the light, and in soul the truth:
Aryan morality came down from heaven in a ray of light.</p>

<h4>His Destiny.</h4>

<p>Thus, the Indo-European religion knew a supreme God, and this God
was the God of the heavens. He has organized the world and rules it,
because, as he is the heaven, all is in him, and all passes within him,
according to his law; he is omniscient and moral, because, being
luminous, he sees all things and all hearts.</p>

<p>This God was named by the various names of the sky—Dyaus, Varana,
Svar, which, according to the requirements of the thought, described
either the object or the person, the heavens or the God. Later on, each
language made a choice, and fixed the proper name of the God on one of
these words; by which its ancient value as a common noun was lost or
rendered doubtful: thus, in Greek <i>Dyaus</i> became the name of the
heaven-god (Zeus) and Varana (<span class="greek" title="Ouranos">Οὐρανός</span>) was the name of the heavens,
as a thing; in Sanscrit <i>Dyaus</i> or <i>Svar</i> was the material heavens; the
heaven-god was Varana (later changed into Varuna); the Slavs fixed on
the word Svar, by means of a derivative, Svarogu, the idea of the
celestial god; the Romans made the same choice as the Greeks with
their <i>Jup-piter</i>, and set aside the other names of the heavens; lastly,
Persia described the god by one of his abstract epithets, the Lord,
Ahura, and obliterated the external traces of his former naturalistic
character.</p>

<p>This god, who reigned at the time of the breaking up of the religion
of Aryan unity, was carried away, with the various religions which
sprang up from it, to the various regions where chance brought the
Aryan migrations. Of the five religions over which he ruled, three
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span>
remained faithful to him to the last, and only forsook him at the
moment when they themselves perished;—they are those of the Greeks,
of the Romans, and of the Slavs, with whom Zeus, Juppiter, and
Svarogu preserved the titles and attributes of the Supreme god of the
Aryans, as long as the national religion lasted. They succumbed to
Christ; “Heaven-father” gave way to the “Father who is in
Heaven.”</p>

<p>India, on the contrary, very soon forgot that god for whose origin
and formation, however, she accounts much better than any other
Aryan religion does; and it was not a foreign god who dethroned him—a
god from without—but a native god, a god of his own family,
Indra, the hero of the tempest.</p>

<p>In fact, the supreme god of the Aryans was not a god of unity;
the Asura, the Lord, was not the Lord in the same sense as Adonai.
There were by the side of him, within himself, a number of gods, acting
of their own accord, and often of independent origin. The wind, the
rain, the thunder; the fire under its three forms—the sun in the
heavens, the lightning in the cloud, the terrestrial fire on the altar; the
prayer under its two forms—the human prayer, which ascends from the
altar to heaven, and the heavenly prayer, which resounds in the din of
the storm, on the lips of a divine priest, and descends from the heights
with the torrents of libations poured from the cup of heaven, all the
forces of nature, both concrete and abstract, appealing at once to the
eye and to the imagination of man, were instantly deified. If the god
of the heavens, greater in time and space, always present and everywhere
present, easily rose to the supreme rank, carried there by his
double Infinity, yet others, with a less continuous, but more dramatic
action, revealing themselves by sudden, unexpected events, maintained
their ancient independence, and religious development might lead to
their usurping the power of the king of the heavens. Already during
the middle of the Vedic period, Indra, the noisy god of the storm,
ascends the summit of the Pantheon, and eclipses his majestic rival by
the din of his resounding splendour.</p>

<p>He is the favourite hero of the Vedic Rishis; they do not tire of
telling how he strikes with his bolt the serpent of the cloud, which
enfolds the light and the waters; how he shatters the cavern of
Cambara, how he delivers the captive Auroras and cows, who will
shed torrents of light and milk on the earth. It is he who makes the
sun come out again; it is he who makes the world, annihilated during
the night, reappear; it is he who recreates it, he who creates it. In a
whole series of hymns he ascends to the side of Varuna, and shares the
empire with him; at last he mounts above him, and becomes the
Universal King:—</p>

<div class="blockquot"><p>“He, who, as soon as he was born, a god of thought, has surpassed the gods by
the power of his intellect, he whose trembling made the two worlds quake by the
power of his strength—O man, it is Indra!
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span></p>

<p>“He, who has firmly established the tottering earth and arrested the quivering
mountains; he who has fixed the extent of the wide-stretching atmosphere, and
who has propped up the sky,—O man, it is Indra!</p>

<p>“He, who, after slaying the serpent, unpenned the seven rivers; who brought
forth the cows from their hiding-place in the cavern; he, who, by the clashing of
the two stones, has engendered Agni,—O man, it is Indra!</p>

<p>“He, who made all these great things; he, who struck down the demon race,
driving it to concealment; he, who, like a fortunate gamester who wins at play,
carries off the wealth of the impious,—O man, it is Indra!</p>

<p>“He, who gives life to both rich and poor, and to the priest his singer who implores
him; the god with beautiful lips; the protecting god who brings the stones
together to press out the soma,—O man, it is Indra!</p>

<p>“He, who has in his hands the herds of horses and cows, the cities and the
chariots of war; he, who has created the Sun and the dawn; he, who rules the
waters,—O man, it is Indra!</p>

<p>“He, who is invoked by the two contending armies, by the enemies facing each
other, either triumphant or beaten; he, whom, when they meet in the struggle on
the same chariot, during the onslaught, they invoke against each other,—O man,
it is Indra!</p>

<p>“He, who discovered Çambara in the mountains where he had been hidden
forty years; he, who killed the serpent in his full strength, who struck him dead on
the body of Dânu,<a name="FNanchor_55" id="FNanchor_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a>—O man,
it is Indra!</p>

<p>“Heaven and earth bow down before him; when he shakes, the mountains
tremble; the drinker of soma, look at him! bearing the bolt in his arm, the bolt in
his hand,—O man, it is Indra!”</p></div>

<p>But the usurper does not enjoy his triumph long; in the heat of his
victory he is already stung to the heart, mortally wounded by a new
and mystic power which is growing at his side, the power of prayer, of
sacrifice, of worship, of <i>Brahma</i>, whose reign begins to dawn towards
the end of the Vedic period, and which is still in existence.</p>

<p>What Indra did in India during an historical period, Perkun and
Odin did in a pre-historical period, the one among the Lithuanians, the
other among the Germans. Perkun and Odin are the Indras of these
two nations, and have each dethroned the god of the heavens. Perkun
was the god of the thunder with the Lithuanian pagans, and one can
recognize in him a twin brother of the Hindoo <i>Parjanya</i>, one of the
forms of the god of the storm in Vedic mythology. This king of the
Lithuanian Pantheon is a king of recent date; what proves it is that
the Slavs, so closely related to the Lithuanians in their beliefs, as well
as in their language, and who also knew the god Perkun, have still as
their Supreme god the Supreme god of the ancient Aryan religion, the
god of the heavens, Svarogu.</p>

<p>The same revolution took place in Germany, but in a more remote
period. The god of the heavens has vanished; he is replaced by the
god of the stormy atmosphere, Odin, or Wuotan, the Vâta of India,
the warrior god who is heard in the din of the tempest, leading his
dishevelled bands of warriors, or letting loose on a celestial quarry the
howling packs of the wild chase.</p>

<p>Thus did the Greeks, the Romans, and the Slavs allow their god to be
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span>
vanquished by a foreign god; the Germans, the Lithuanians, and
the Hindoos themselves forsook him for an inferior creation. Only in one
single nation he finds worshippers faithful to the last. They are not
numerous, but they have not allowed their belief to be encroached
upon either by time or by man. We mean the few thousands of
Ghebers or Parsis, who, during the great political and religious shipwreck
of Persia, fleeing before the victorious sword of the Prophet,
kept from Islam the treasure of their old belief, and who to this day,
in the year 1879 of the Christian era, in the fire temples in Bombay,
offer up sacrifices to the very same god who was sung by the unknown
ancestors of the Aryan race at a time which eludes the grasp of
history.</p>

<p class="author"><span class="smcap">James Darmesteter.</span></p>

<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38" id="Footnote_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a>
Cf. Max Müller: “Lectures on the Science of Language,” and “Lectures on the
Science of Religion;” Michel Bréal, “Mélanges de Mythologie et de Linguistique.”</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39" id="Footnote_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a>
Maury, “Histoire des Religions de la Grèce;” Preller, “Griechische Mythologie.”</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40" id="Footnote_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a>
See Muir, “Sanscrit Texts,” v. 58; Max Müller, “Lectures on the Origin and Growth
of Religion,” p. 284.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41" id="Footnote_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a>
“This Lord.”</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42" id="Footnote_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a>
The cloud often compared to a tree branching out in the sky.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43" id="Footnote_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a>
The fire (Ignis) which is born in the waters of heaven in the form of lightning.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44" id="Footnote_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a>
A sacred plant whose sap is offered to the gods. It is pressed between two stones to
extract the sacred liquor.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45" id="Footnote_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a>
The sea of the earth and the sea of the clouds.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46" id="Footnote_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a>
See J. Darmesteter, “Ormazd et Ahriman,” §§ 18-59.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47" id="Footnote_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a>
Ormazd is the modern name, contracted from the ancient Ahura Mazda.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48" id="Footnote_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a>
Which is the same word as the Sanskrit Asura.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49" id="Footnote_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a>
The sun is also the bird of Zeus (Æschylus, the Suppliants).</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50" id="Footnote_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a>
That is to say “to their Supreme God.”</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51" id="Footnote_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a>
G. Klek, “Einleitung in die Slavische Literatur-Geschichte.”</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52" id="Footnote_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a>
“Ormazd et Ahriman,” §§ 62, sq.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53" id="Footnote_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a>
</p>
<div class="poem">
<span class="i0">Praeterea, coeli rationes ordine certo<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Et varia annorum cernebant tempora vorti;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Nec poterant quibus id fieret cognoscere causis.<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Ergo perfugium sibi habebant omnia Diveis<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Tradere, et ollorum nutu facere omnia flecti.<br /></span>
<span class="i0">In cœloque Deum sedes et templa locarunt,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Per cœlum volvi quia nox et luna videtur,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Luna, dies, et nox et noctis signa severa,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Noctivagaeque faces cœli, flammaeque volantes,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Nubila, sol, imbres, nix, ventei, fulmina, grando,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Et rapidei fremitus, et murmura magna minarum.—v. 1187.<br /></span>
</div>
</div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54" id="Footnote_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a>
In other systems, having regard to the eternity of the God and no longer to his
immensity, boundless Time became the first principle (Zarvan Akarana).</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55" id="Footnote_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a>
His mother.</p></div>
</div>

<hr />

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span></p>

<h2>LAZARUS APPEALS TO DIVES.</h2>

<p>The elaborate schemes which have been propounded in attempts
to solve the much-vexed riddle how best and most effectually to
ameliorate the condition of the working-classes—such as Owenism,
Fourierism, and such like—have had their inception in the minds of
philanthropists outside and above our circle. They have been conceived
for the most part with a genuine feeling of the immense importance of
this, the most burning and momentous question of modern days, and
illumined in many cases with deep philosophic insight; yet, as it is almost
impossible for any but a born proletarian to understand the needs, the
wants and the daily lives of the proletarian, it is not unreasonable to
suppose that the absence of this special knowledge may have contributed
somewhat to the unworkableness of the various systems proposed. Beyond
this, however, it strikes me that most of them contained a fatal flaw,
inherent in their constitutions. They were too ambitious, aimed at
too much, and were altogether of so revolutionary and subversive a
character as to alarm the great majority of those whose goodwill must
be obtained before it can be possible to reduce any theory to experiment
on a sufficiently extended scale to enable an unprejudiced observer to
pronounce decisively on the result accomplished.</p>

<p>Were it not that the accident of my having been thrown by birth
and association amongst the very poorest of the poor (“but indifferent
honest”) community of a large city may enable me to supplement to
some extent the ideas enunciated by benevolent theorists belonging to
the upper strata of society, I should not have the temerity to seek
to pass out of the region of the “eternal silences.” Moreover, I do not
announce a new and perfect evangel to be ushered in by loud flourish
of trumpets. I aim at nothing more ambitious than to be allowed to
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span>
offer a few hints as to the direction which I conceive future gospels
of humanity must take in order to be of practical utility.</p>

<p>Having thus endeavoured to justify myself for rushing in where
sometimes “angels fear to tread,” I have no intention of apologizing for
the crudeness of my ideas, or my lack of grace in literary composition.
Taking into consideration the small amount of elementary education
drilled into me at a charity school for a brief period of my very juvenile
days, and the continued absence of any duly qualified instructor since,
“all that goes without saying.”</p>

<p>One more egotistical, or egoistical, remark, and I proceed. I am in
no sense a <i>specialist</i>. I am neither a Good Templar nor a Convivial
Toper; neither a disciple of Nihilism, nor any other school of advanced
thought (so called), nor a bigoted sectarian. I am a private in neither
the ranks of bovine Toryism nor of rabid Radicalism; but I write
simply as one of that common ruck of ordinary practical working men,
which in reality forms the great staple of our plebiscite, although certain
very noisy and turbulent minorities may possibly have led to a contrary
inference.</p>

<p>In the erection of my little structure, I, like all other architects,
require a good foundation as the basis of operations; and in the present
case the foundation required is simply a desire on the part of those
bipeds who stand erect on pedestals for an increased knowledge of their
fellows who crawl and kneel and lie in a thousand and one contorted
postures on the miry clay. Enlarged knowledge will bring enlarged
sympathy for each other on the part of high and low alike. As matters
now stand, those above us never really see us in undress. When they
come across us we are either too slavishly sycophantic or too ruggedly
independent,—both being masks donned for the occasion,—and not in
any sense our natural selves; and I have a dim kind of suspicion that on the
few occasions when gentlemen voluntarily come forward and try to make
us believe that they are taking us into their confidence—on the hustings,
say, for instance—some disguise of the same kind may be adopted, and
that the features we then see are not altogether the real ones. If I am
right in this assumption, how is it possible for either class to have anything
like a competent knowledge of the other? Indeed, I do not
think I should be far wrong in saying that the manners and customs of
the Fijian Islanders and other aborigines of distant lands are better
known generally to the upper ten thousand than those of the lower
native millions; and, of course, the converse holds equally good.
Domestic servants, perhaps, may be said to form exceptions to this latter
rule, seeing that they often have peeps into the innermost arcana; but
as they are for the most part—the male portion of them at all events—more
utterly inexplicable beings than their masters, the general fund of
information is not much increased through that channel. Flunkeydom
is much more insufferable and incomprehensible to the general run of
us than swelldom itself.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span></p>

<p>Granted, however, the desire for a better acquaintance with their
humbler brethren on the part of our aristocracy and plutocracy (for this,
like all other good things, must <i>descend</i> from above), it will be found
that, as a mutual understanding of each other’s peculiarities is
increased, the rich man (in this paper, as in an Act of Parliament, words
denoting persons of the masculine gender shall be construed as including
persons of the feminine gender also) will bestow a little less careful
thought and attention on—shall I say partridges?—and more on his
fellow-man; and the bitter class-prejudice which undoubtedly exists
among the needy against the prosperous and well-fed will gradually
die out. Then, and then only, will a new and brighter era dawn
on “poor humanity;” and, I may say, that I hold optimist views
with reference to this consummation. I think I observe a growing
acknowledgment of the claims of humble folk in the literature of the
day; and as literature is universally regarded as an outcome of the
prevalent tone of feeling, I look upon this as a good omen.</p>

<p>Having worked myself into this happy frame of mind, I am emboldened
to request that consideration may be given to a few examples
of the ideas which, “in the stillness of the night,” and otherwise, have intruded
themselves upon me—ideas embryonic and unformed, I doubt not,
but genuine as far as they go. From the multitude of these shadowy
phantoms which have now for a long time past oppressed me, I select those
which strike me as having special reference to the improvement of
our poor populations in four of the salient matters of life—viz., in health,
pocket, mind, and amusements; and these I will deal with <i>seriatim</i>.</p>

<h4>Health.</h4>

<p>This, amongst all sublunary blessings, is undoubtedly the one of
paramount importance, and, seeing how things now stand with us,
it is imperative that it should be <i>the</i> question to receive earliest attention.</p>

<p>I think it is the Rev. Harry Jones who, in one of his warm-hearted
essays, liken as rotten, worn-out, filthy habitation to a lump of putrid
carrion, exhaling poison all around, and which should be as remorselessly
cut out from amongst the dwellings of human beings as a fly-blown
spot is cut out from a carcass. This simile, perhaps, is not a very
savoury one, but it possesses a much greater merit, that of being
<i>absolutely true</i>—slightly vulgar, but astonishingly correct. I could
illustrate its verity by many pertinent instances which have come within
my own experience, but I feel that this is not the place to do so.
What then is the remedy? Obviously to re-enact the present “Artizans’
Dwellings Improvement Act” as a <i>compulsory</i> statute, and not as an
optional one. Let the squalid, crazy, tumble-down rookeries which
exist in every town in the kingdom be ruthlessly demolished, care, of
course, being taken that suitable dwellings are cotemporaneously built
on better sanitary principles for those whom it will be necessary to
evict in order to carry out such improvements. And I would suggest,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span>
as a branch of the pervading idea which forms the centre and core of
my suggestions (of which more anon), that the Municipal Corporations
of our cities and towns should be themselves in their official capacity
the landlords of such new and improved dwellings, and should employ
their own tradesmen to build them. And, furthermore, that in the
erection of whatever new cottages may be found necessary for the
purpose indicated, the latter-day style of running them up all alike, as
uniform as so many squares of glass in a sash, should be abandoned,
and a little variety of style, if only in trifling particulars, introduced.
Human nature, even the human nature of the uneducated poor, rebels
against this painful monotony, and grows intensely weary of over-much
regularity, which, if a virtue at all, is one of so starched and rigid a
character, that it takes a considerable amount of resolution, and a far
higher degree of culture than we can lay claim to, to enable us to fall
in love with it. To our uninstructed eyes, diversity of form is much
more pleasing than undeviating rectangularity.</p>

<p>Again, the most painstaking care must be taken that these substituted
domiciles be properly and thoroughly drained. Unhappily,
although this is a truism and a self-evident proposition, it is, through
carelessness or indifference, frequently neglected—a fact too sadly
attested by the ravages of fever from time to time in our outlying
districts, where, twenty years ago, the bricklayer and hodman had not
arrived upon the scene. To obviate this it is absolutely necessary that
the most skilled science should be employed, and the most searching
local legislation strictly enforced, to secure the carrying out of approved
sewerage and drainage systems.</p>

<p>Furthermore, I would suggest that no horse or cattle slaughterer,
tallow-melter, manure-merchant, tanner, or other person plying any of
the trades known as noisome or offensive, should be allowed to continue
such trades without a special licence, and that by the terms of such
licence they should be prohibited, under heavy penalties, from carrying
on their businesses outside the limits of a certain area to be expressly
set aside for that purpose, at such a distance from the centre of every
town as may be judged desirable by the sanitary authorities. Within
this area pig-styes and fowl-houses should be erected, and no swine,
ducks, or geese be permitted to be kept outside its boundary. An inspector
should be appointed specially for this quarter of the town, who
should direct all his energies to seeing that the best principles of
ventilation, smoke-consumption, drainage, use of disinfectants, &amp;c. &amp;c.,
are adopted throughout his domain; and all ill-conditioned recusants
against the decrees of the local senate should be mulcted in heavy
damages. On the part of the senate itself there must be no apathy,
no supineness, no dilettanteism, but a stern, vigorous determination
stringently and impartially to enforce prompt obedience to its edicts.</p>

<p>No doubt this would be somewhat of a hardship upon certain individuals,
on the score of inconvenience and increased cost of production;
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span>
but I doubt not they would take care to indemnify themselves. Even
were it otherwise, however, the aggregate gain in so important a matter
as the public health must swamp all minor considerations. Private
interests must inevitably be sacrificed in the advancement of the general
weal. All the Mrs. Partingtons that ever existed, with all their mops
(whether such mops are called monopolies, vested rights, or what
not), must perforce recede before the rising tide of the ocean of
civilization.</p>

<p>Having well drained our streets and habitations, and consecrated a
<i>quartier</i> for the purposes last mentioned, the next step must be to increase
the number of our iron hospitals; and, disregarding sentimentality,
immediately to isolate and put in quarantine all persons suffering from
infectious diseases. Firmly grasp this nettle the moment it crops up,
and without a shadow of doubt you will reduce to a minimum the high
rate of mortality at present existing in our overcrowded cities through
a total neglect of proper precaution. All textile fabrics, bedding,
books, &amp;c., which have come in contact with the patient, to be consumed
by fire. Even Vandalism is excusable, nay, commendable, in certain
circumstances.</p>

<p>Finally, on this branch of the subject, I submit for the consideration
of municipalities the following recommendations:—</p>

<p>1. Preserve or procure open spaces, sufficient to form recreation
grounds for your communities—say an acre for every thousand inhabitants.
Regard this to be quite as imperative a necessity as the
acquisition of further land to add to the cemeteries in which you inter
the bodies of those who have “gone over to the majority.” Let the
quick share your care and attention on equal terms with the dead in
the matter of requisite space and accommodation.</p>

<p>2. Cause your common lodging-houses and your still worse haunts
to be under the most vigilant supervision; and that <i>constantly</i>, and not
fitfully and spasmodically. The more severe and restrictive your regulations
are with reference to these matters the better it will be for all
decent, quiet citizens.</p>

<p>3. Provide every householder within your jurisdiction with a <i>filter</i>,
to insure to him and his the opportunity of enjoying water free from
organic and other impurities.</p>

<p>4. Furnish him also with two boxes, varying in size according to
the dimensions of his domicile: one to form a receptacle for dust, cinders,
old rags, broken bottles, and what is generically known as “dry
dirt;” and the other for decayed vegetables, the entrails of fish, and
that kind of refuse that we rather uneuphoniously call “muck.” Such
boxes to be taken away once a week and empty ones left in their stead.
As a corollary to this, forbid him, under penalties, to continue his
present practice of pitching derelicts into the street, as the readiest
means of being quit of them; and make him responsible for the cleanliness
of his doorsteps and the pavement in front of his dwelling.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span></p>

<p>5. Send round carts of chloride of lime, at short intervals during
warm or “muggy” weather, and direct a bucketful to be delivered to
every housewife, to remove stenches from sinks, water-closets, &amp;c.</p>

<p>6. Erect a furnace in some convenient locality, to serve the same
purpose as that known as the “Queen’s tobacco-pipe” at the London
Docks does or did—<i>i.e.</i>, to reduce to ashes all infected or condemned
articles.</p>

<p>The foregoing list of recommendations might be extended indefinitely;
but perhaps the above will be sufficient to begin with.</p>

<p>There are, no doubt, two objections at least which may be raised against
the adoption of any scheme founded on these hints: first, one on the score
of increased expenditure; secondly, one condemning increased centralization.
With regard to the former, my answer is that health, especially
the health of the aggregate mass of the body politic, cannot possibly
be bought too dear; and that nothing really is so costly to any community
as pestilence and death. As to the latter, I have no other defence to
urge than my firm conviction that, much as it is railed against, centralization
is as nearly an unmixed good as it is possible for anything in this
sublunary (and marvellously complex) sphere to be. Everybody knows
how inadequate the very best isolated efforts are to exterminate
any widespread evil; and even organizations which are independent of,
and do not radiate from or gravitate to, a common centre, frequently
cross each other’s paths, and to some extent defeat each other’s purposes;
occasioning a great waste of wholesome energy, which, well directed,
might achieve marvellous results. As cosmos is greater than chaos—as
a well-spliced rope is stronger than its separate strands—so is centralization
and cohesion greater and stronger than individualism and segregation.</p>

<h4>Pocket.</h4>

<p>Many a vigorous arm has applied the axe to that dense and matted
jungle, the indigence of the lower orders; but little more has been
accomplished than the blunting of the hatchet and the exhaustion of the
pioneer who wielded it.</p>

<p>This being the case, it would be the height of folly for me, with my
far feebler frame and my puny weapon, to attempt to do more than to
peer cautiously around the deep shades, and try to find out, as a dweller
<i>within</i> those murky woods, if here a little path and there a little
opening, into which a gleam of sunlight penetrates at times, be not
discoverable, half hidden, perchance, by clumps of brushwood, which it
will cost but little trouble to clear away. I shall therefore restrict
myself to indicating such of these openings as I see, or fancy I see, from
whence operations might, according to my notion, be directed towards
the demolition of portions at all events of this swart and gloomy forest.</p>

<p>One of the largest of these clearings is undoubtedly, I think,
<i>Co-operation</i>, of which there are two kinds—viz., combinations between
masters and men in the shape of limited partnerships, a per-centage on
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>
profits, &amp;c.; and combinations amongst the wage-earners themselves for
certain specified purposes.</p>

<p>With regard to the first named, I am rather inclined to doubt the
probability of its ever becoming an important factor in the sum of
human progress, on account of the unlikelihood of its being generally
adopted either in the near or distant future, and I am still more
sceptical as to its efficacy as a panacea, even if it were universally reduced
to practice, especially in these days of commercial disasters.</p>

<p>Coming, then, to the other mode of co-operation—associations of
manual workers—this also divides itself into two branches, having two
distinct objects—namely, the receipt of higher wages for labour
performed, and the obtaining greater value in commodities in the disbursement
of such wages. Both these are, no doubt, laudable aspirations;
and, although at the first glance they may appear incompatible
with, if not altogether antagonistic to, each other,—inasmuch as increased
remuneration to the producer means an increase in the price of the
thing produced,—yet it will be seen, on mature reflection, that as a
very large proportion of operatives are employed in the manufacture of
articles of luxury, of which they are not consumers or purchasers, so
much of the increase in the price of such articles as finds its way into
the pockets of the artificer in the shape of added wages is a net gain to
that portion of the labouring classes, and will inevitably exude from
such portion to the benefit of the whole, in the same manner as what
may be called in contradistinction their normal earnings.</p>

<p>I should like to say one word about combinations of workmen in this
place, which may be distasteful to unqualified panegyrists of the system:
such combinations should invariably be in accordance with our recognized
code of morals, and they must be in obedience to the ordinary laws of
Nature; and it is to be feared that these desiderata to perfection in
co-operation have at times been lost sight of in the past. I am compelled
to blush for my order when I find them seizing the opportunity
of their employers being under a heavy time-contract for the execution
of important public or other works to organize a strike: this is clearly
an infraction of all the ethics of morality. Neither can I appreciate
their sense of the fitness of things when I hear them laying it down as
a sound axiom that wages should be equalized, so that the stupid, idle,
or inferior workman should be on a par with the skilled and industrious
one. This is a blunder against one of the most immutable of Nature’s
laws—that of variety and infinite gradation; the suggestion implies a
yearning after the utterly unattainable, which it is astonishing men of
otherwise sound judgment should seriously entertain for one moment.
As a comrade of mine pithily observed, not long since, when we were
discussing the possibility of devising a scheme by which all men should
receive the same amount of remuneration for their labour, and, when
received, be enabled to make it go equally far—“You might as well
try to make men all o’ one height.”
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span></p>

<p>Remove these excrescences from our combinations, and when it is
found we can be practical as well as earnest, co-operation will have
acquired a new vigour, and will be able to accomplish greater results.
The main citadel will be none the less impregnable because our forces
are not scattered abroad in various directions, in the vain endeavour to
strengthen totally indefensible frontiers.</p>

<p>But, after all, it is from the other branch of co-operation—the
<i>co-operative store system</i>—that the greatest advantages may be expected
to accrue. This is growing into favour yearly, still growing (despite
recent diatribes in the newspapers), and is extending its ramifications
into quite primitive districts. The knowledge that this is an undoubted
fact should afford gratification to the well-wishers of the poor.</p>

<p>Yet this gratification is subject to some modification when it is seen
that this, not the least important birth of the nineteenth century, though
growing and bearing within itself the germs of almost infinite possibilities,
is at present of too tiny dimensions to grapple with that colossal
ogre—the wasteful expenditure of the impecunious. It is Hercules
indeed, but Hercules still in swaddling clothes before the strangling
of the serpent. The amount of dealings at these stores
by the class to whom they are calculated to prove the greatest
boon, when compared with dealings by this same class with <i>very</i>
retail shopkeepers and at other places where the practice of paying
“through the nose” (pardon the vulgarity) so extensively prevails, will
be found to be almost infinitesimal. The question therefore arises,
may it not be possible to replace these pine torches by Edisonian lights,
so as to eliminate from wider tracts the thick darkness enwrapping the
minds of the sons and daughters of toil as to what constitutes their true
interests? It appears to me that there is one way of rendering this
feasible, which I deferentially submit for consideration. It may be
quite impracticable; and, if practicable, may contain such flaws as to be
futile. If so, on defects being pointed out which I am not able,
unassisted, to discover, I can only say I am open to conviction.
I have no desire to be charged with an ineradicable attachment
to that peculiar feat of horsemanship known as “riding a hobby
to death.” My plan is simply this: first, let every town of
say over 10,000 inhabitants possess an internal government complete
in itself, with plenary administrative powers; let groups of
villages, in such numbers as may be determined on (the present Poor-Law
Union Divisions might be taken as a basis), form cordons round
themselves in like manner, and with the like objects; let every care be
taken to select the very best men of every social grade to form the local
senate, and let the members of which it is composed be paid for their
services out of the public (local) funds, be subject to re-election at short
intervals, and be required to give good accounts of their stewardship.
Further, let it be clearly understood that the only condition on which a
man could hope to be enrolled in this representative band, or, being enrolled,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span>
expect to be allowed to continue his official existence, would be his
distinct and unquestioning recognition of <i>personal</i> responsibility, as far as is
humanly possible, for, and his unwavering resolution to secure, the well-being
of <i>all</i> his constituents, physically, pecuniarily, mentally, and morally.</p>

<p>These preliminaries being supposed to be satisfactorily settled, such
incorporation or assembly of chosen ones might (always supposing my
views happened to find favour in their sight) open as many co-operative
stores—so many for each trade—as would be sufficient to supply the
needs of the entire community, selecting competent men from each
trade to manage the different departments, and paying them by an
agreed salary in the same manner as rate collectors and relieving
officers are paid. A certain specified per-centage to be added to the
prime cost of the various articles to defray the estimated expenses of
management, advertising, rent (if necessary, though it would be better
if the local legislators were also the landlords), wear and tear, depreciation
in stock, and miscellaneous expenses for the year; and sales to be
made to the consumer <i>for cash only</i>. The urban or rural chancellor of the
exchequer would, in his annual budget, soon learn to adjust the amount
of his tax (for so the per-centage may be considered), over and above the
original cost price, according to the probable exigencies of the ensuing
year, by the light afforded by the transactions of the preceding one.</p>

<p>Seeing how many millions of pounds are annually disbursed for the
barest sustenance and most absolute necessaries of life by the poor of the
three kingdoms, from most of whom exorbitant rates of profit are wrung,—for
the fact need not be expatiated on here that the more indigent the
purchaser, and the more his penury drives him to live from hand-to-mouth,
the less value he receives for his money, to say nothing of the further
irruptions made into his income by the only partially-slain “truck
system,” or by the payment of interest to the accommodating successors
of the Lombards, whose golden balls proclaim them to serve the
honourable office of jackal-purveyors to the lions of the gin-palaces,—seeing
this, I say, shall I be stigmatized as a dreamer, a half-crazy
Utopian, if I anticipate magnificent results to follow from fair trial of a
scheme designed to stem the frightful torrent of improvidence at present
obtaining amongst the working classes, and to enable them to occupy
the new position of being participators in the benefits of a sound commercial
undertaking?</p>

<p>Here, however, as elsewhere, there are tares amongst the wheat—if,
indeed, it be wheat. An awkward inquiry obtrudes itself unbidden.
What is to become of the thousands of deserving folks, too old for the
most part to begin life <i>de novo</i>, who have earned a tolerably honest
livelihood as small shopkeepers, and who would probably find themselves,
under the system just recommended, “improved off the face of the
earth?” Partially the difficulty might be met by the employment of
the most active or most experienced of them in the borough stores. A
little more might be accomplished in this direction also by giving some
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span>
of them appointments to the numerous new offices it will be found
necessary to create if our municipal authorities ever do wake up and
bestir themselves, and aspire to becoming something more suitable to
the spirit of the age than mere assemblies for palaver. But when all
this is done, there will still be the residuum, and that residuum
composed almost exclusively of the feeble, the aged, the halt, the lame,
and the blind, who will be more or less thrown upon their own
resources. For these, the only gleam of light I can discern is the fact
that a remnant of their old customers will not find out all at once the
error of their ways, and will go on in their accustomed grooves for some
time after the centralized co-operative store shall have become <i>un fait
accompli</i>, and so their decline into pauperism will be slow and gradual.
Heaven only knows how some of these small shopkeepers contrive to
exist even now by vending pennyworths and halfpennyworths of this,
that, and the other; it can only be by imposing extravagant profits on the
article vended. One cannot help thinking that their case can hardly very
well be worse than it is, in any event. But be this as it may, care for
their particular interests must not be permitted to dominate over due
consideration for those of the vast aggregate mass forming the rest of
our <i>clientèle</i>, innumerable as “leaves in Vallambrosa,”—and, like other
and greater folks, superfluous retailers must submit to be sacrificed for
the benefit of the common weal.</p>

<p>It is impossible to deal even in the most cursory manner with this
“pocket” question without just glancing at the important bearing
which the question of temperance must exercise upon it. To place a
further spending power in the hands of an incurably intemperate
populace would obviously mean only to increase and intensify the vice
of intemperance. While deprecating any intention of making this
paper the vehicle for a furious tirade against drunkenness, I feel bound
to say in passing that, little as I love total abstinence, I regard it as
a much lesser evil than the unrestrained indulgence of dipsomania; and
if any man feels that he is so much a slave to his degraded appetite that
he cannot keep up a nodding acquaintance with John Barleycorn without
wallowing under his influence in the mud of inebriety, I respect
that man for signing the pledge. My optimist instincts, however, buoy
me up again on this subject also, for I sincerely believe that, high
authority for the assertion though there be, mankind are <i>not</i> mostly
fools; and that when they have begun to realize the fact that they have
a choice as to the kind of investment they may obtain for their money,
the great majority of them will be looking out for some more substantial
advantage than the questionable luxury of seeking temporary
oblivion from carking cares and the grisly spectre of hopeless indigence.
It may, I think, be relied on with certainty that an improvement in the
pecuniary circumstances of the poor would beget increased self-respect,
and self-respect would proclaim drunkenness <i>unfashionable</i>, and that now
vigorous and lusty giant would ere long find himself as decrepit and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span>
infirm as Bunyan’s Giant Pope. Those of us who have read of the
bacchanalian orgies of the great no further back than the days of the
Regency of George IV., and contrast it with the sobriety which is said
to prevail amongst them in our days, cannot be accused of being groundlessly
sanguine if we augur the percolation downwards of this stream
of moderation under happier auspices, and that, too, in no remote
future.</p>

<p>A third means of lightening the strain upon our <i>ouvriers</i> is to
multiply the facilities for emigration. I would even go so far as to
say that I think an <i>International</i> Emigration and Immigration League
between all the civilized nations of the world, for the purpose of
drafting overplus populations into thinly inhabited districts, would be
rather a good thing than otherwise, the inconveniences attending
differences of language, manners, and so forth, being quite surmountable;
whereas the difficulties attendant upon the possession of more hands
to labour than there is work to perform, and consequently more hungry
stomachs than there is food to fill, is altogether insurmountable. With
regard to the affliction of <i>mal du pays</i>, from which undoubtedly many
of the expatriated would suffer at intervals, that would be found to
be a much more tolerable burden to bear, combined with a sufficiency
of victuals and clothing, than the pangs of starvation or semi-starvation
even on one’s “native heather.”</p>

<p>But as it is no part of my programme to move too fast, or too far
at once, I do not insist upon any international arrangement of the
kind I have hinted at during, say, the present decade. I do, however,
earnestly entreat all whom it may concern to try their best to place the
matter of Emigration on a proper footing. I unhesitatingly maintain
that whilst Great Britain possesses untold thousands of acres of virgin
soil, and practically unlimited untried possibilities, in her numerous
colonies, this our “sea-girt isle” ought not to suffer from a plethora
of willing workers. The existing facilities held out to our overcrowded
populations to induce them to venture upon “fresh fields and pastures
new” might be multiplied a hundred-fold.</p>

<p>Surely it ought to be part of the fundamental policy of a State—especially
of a State whose real governing body is elected by household
suffrage—to take the most active measures for insuring the weal of all
its citizens: the humblest as well as the highest. Does not this, indeed,
form the very quintessential attribute of good government? Has it not
been rightly said that a State represents the totality of all the individuals
composing it? I assume these are sound political axioms; and if I am
right in this assumption, may I not suggest, as the most certain way of
attaining the desired end, that our Representative Government should formally
acknowledge our claims upon them by appointing a Minister for
“the Condition of the People,” with a seat in the Cabinet? The next
step would be easy, for when once the whole surroundings were fairly
brought within the range of vision, the vital importance of Emigration as
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span>
a principal means of amelioration would be recognized; and it would be
discovered that an able Secretary for Emigration would prove an invaluable
auxiliary in the effective working of the department.</p>

<p>It would be necessary, I apprehend, to select for this latter office a
man eminent as well for good temper as for a capacious intellect, as the
multiplicity of the functions he would have to perform would render such
office by no means a sinecure; and the involved and complex matters he
would have to deal with might, at times, go far in the direction of
ruffling the serenest imperturbability.</p>

<p>The eye of fancy depicts him in the active performance of his multifarious
duties, surrounded by numerous painstaking subordinates, some
of whom bear to him huge tomes, containing a full alphabetical list
(compiled from the census returns and other sources) of the populations,
industries, and assessments of the United Kingdom, divided into areas
of certain dimensions, showing the age, sex, occupation, and earnings or
incomings of every person; the number of houses (with their rentals or
estimated yearly value), workshops, or other business establishments of
every kind, specifying how many hands are employed in each and the
amount of wages paid; and also showing the number of persons in receipt
of out-door relief, and approximate number of vagrants in each district.
Other attentive satellites open before him the various domesday books,
containing reports by competent surveyors as to the quantity, and the latent
riches or irredeemable poverty, of uncultivated lands throughout those vast
dominions of ours on which the sun never sets; with copious notes by
skilled mercantile men and geographers, pointing out the places where
commodious ports might be formed, railways constructed, or manufactories
erected. Our much-worried Secretary, whose heart is in his work,
compares notes, and directs some of his chief clerks to prepare digests of,
for instance, the information contained in pp. 420 to 446 of the 17th
volume of the first set of books, and pp. 97 to 104 of the 32nd volume
of the second set, ready for his consideration on the day but one following.
He then takes up similar digests, which have previously been prepared
in like manner, and sees clearly that one hundred artisan families
of various specified trades, full particulars of which are before him, may,
with advantage to all parties, be transplanted, passage free, from the
blind alleys of Flintchester to the new settlement of Hornihand in Australasia,
with the authorities of which place the usual arrangement will be
made to assist them on their <i>début</i>, and lend them a helping hand until
they get fairly settled down. Day after day this kind of thing goes on
throughout the year, except for some two months during the late summer
and autumn vacation, when the hard-worked Secretary and his staff are
enjoying a well-earned holiday.</p>

<p>The more I ruminate on this matter of Emigration the more I am convinced
that it is indispensable; it should run on wider lines, and cover
a far more extended area than is possible under anything short of Governmental
intervention. Seeing the utter inutility and inefficacy of isolated
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>
exertions to deal with the mighty problems which our complex civilization
presents for solution, I should, on behalf of myself and my class, hail
with joy the prospect of State interference in our interests. Sneers may
continue to be directed against, and witty sarcasms levelled at, a “Paternal
Government,” “infringement of that liberty of the subject which is the
inherent privilege and birthright of every Briton,” and other like cuckoo-cries.
But meantime we starve; we increase and multiply in obedience
to the law of Nature, and our opportunities of earning subsistence do <i>not</i>
increase and multiply in a corresponding ratio. And without by any
means desiring to steep my pen in midnight blackness in order to portray
possible portentous consequences, yet it is a proposition not to be
controverted that the ever-increasing preponderance of born toilers over
any quantity of remunerative toil which can by any possibility be created
within the limits of Great Britain proper must inevitably cause such
consequences to be calamitous. For some time past the dark shadow
of over-population has been looming on the horizon of “Merrie England,”
at first no bigger than a man’s hand, but later advancing nearer
and still more near and assuming colossal proportions; and the time
cannot be far distant when it will obstinately refuse to be ignored any
longer, even by the most unreflective, but will assert itself in a manner
little to be desired. How, then, to avert this evil? How to postpone
the advent of the fateful day? Are not these queries of vital interest to
all ranks of society? I for one feel them to be so: hence the above
gropings after gleams of daylight in the midst of the gathering shades.
I do not pretend to aver that I have found the sunshine, that I have
discovered an absolute cure for all the ills that “flesh is heir to.” Too
well I know what mistakes and blunders are interwoven in the best-devised
schemes of human origin. Nevertheless, I hold that the free
expression and ventilation of opinions, even though they may be
erroneous, is often eventually productive of good, by serving to dispel
vagueness of thought and loose generalization, and solidifying the abstract
into the concrete; until which process has been accomplished no
thing soever can be dealt with satisfactorily. Therefore, as a firm <i>dis</i>believer
in the Malthusian philosophy, as also in the recommendations
for checking the increase of population more recently scattered broadcast
amongst us, and being deeply impressed with the imperative necessity
of confronting the difficulty at once—<i>now</i>, in these days when the
heavens above us appear to be hardening into brass, and the earth
beneath us to be corrugating into iron—I have requested the Editor of
this <span class="smcap">Review</span> to afford me the opportunity of giving publicity to my
views.</p>

<p>Closely allied to this division of my paper, if not actually of it, is the
subject of <i>Charity</i>. Here, again, what a lamentable waste of vital force,
what an invertebrate entity crying aloud to be overhauled, remodelled,
jointed, and braced! Contrast the grand sum total yearly given in
charity with the paucity of definite results attained—the well-worn
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>
comparison of the Nasmyth hammer and the nut instantaneously recurs
to one’s mind. Except when subscriptions are raised for some specific
object outside the usual round altogether, how little there is to show for
the expenditure! Why is this so? And what is the remedy? Obviously,
I opine, the cause is individualism, isolation, caprice,—and as obviously,
I ween, the only cure is combination, organization, system. Where we
have now hundreds of little benevolent societies, with their honorary
secretaries and treasurers and fussy committees, each neutralizing the
others, let us have two or three established on a broad basis, with a
central committee who, when the “sinews of war” are collected in one
focus, will be strong enough to enter on paths at present untrodden, and
wise enough to understand that almost innumerable differentiations in
the nature of gifts will be necessary to cope successfully with the almost
illimitable diversities in the nature of requirements, and who will insist
on being invested with discretionary powers in matters of occasional
aids and supplemental benevolences. Then it will be no longer possible
for the shameless pauper, flaunting his rags and sores in the marketplace,
or the whining sycophantic hypocrite, to monopolize the coals of one
society, the blankets of a second, the soup of a third, and so on <i>ad infinitum</i>,
not seldom exchanged for means of procuring beer to give additional
zest to the utterance of the sentiment—“What fools these gentlefolks
be.” The most searching inquiries would be instituted, and perchance
succour afforded to those to whom it would prove an inestimable
boon, but who, from constitutional timidity or <i>mauvaise honte</i>, now starve
and drop and die in silence, overlooked by almoners who take the first miserable-looking
object who comes to hand, the most self-asserting or the most
“’umble,” and straightway pour out the contents of their cornucopias
upon shams, making a miserable travesty of the sacred name of Charity.</p>

<h4>Mind.</h4>

<p>It is refreshing to know that so far as this branch of the subject
is concerned, our governors, having by the force of circumstances been
compelled to realize the fact of our existence, and our claim
to be considered as veritably part and parcel of the body politic,
with rights of common citizenship, have further, within the last few
years, by the passing of the Compulsory Education Act, shown themselves
possessed of political sagacity, by thus taking steps to insure that
our descendants, when their turn comes to exercise and enjoy the civil
privileges now granted to them, shall at least have a ploughed and
manured soil in which to sow the seeds of love for law and order with
some chance of due fructification, instead of the rough, hibbly-hobbly
cinder-heap of their forefathers, which acknowledged no fertilizing
influence but gross bribery, and partially justified the political ostracism
and exclusion of its owners from all share in electoral privileges.</p>

<p>All hail, then, to the School Board system as a great step in the
right direction. Undeniably true as are some of the accusations brought
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span>
against it, alleging that many blunders and useless extravagances, and
much disregard for the susceptibilities of well-meaning but mistaken
opponents, have marked its progress onward in too many instances; yet
as the general idea is laudable and eminently conducive to promoting
the highest interests of the entire population, and as in the nature of things
it may be expected that greater experience will bring greater wisdom,
and the faults charged against the movement gradually become “small
by degrees and beautifully less,” let us heartily wish it God-speed.</p>

<p>Yet, why does the good work stop here? Why should not provision
be made for building upon the foundation thus laid? Why should
totally unformed intelligences be the only ones to profit by this guardian
care, and why should they be led a little way on the road and then left
to flounder along by themselves, and lose themselves in interminable
mazes? Why, in short, should education be confined to children, and
not extended to adults?</p>

<p>It is true that the University Extension Scheme, as now carried out
in many of our larger provincial towns to a very, very limited and only
faintly appreciable extent, tends to show that the wind is just beginning
to blow in this direction also. Something, however, much more comprehensive
is needed. The masses are not reached, as will be patent to
any one who will take the trouble to attend any of the courses of lectures
delivered in connection with this extension system. The neophytes
seeking initiation into this or that special branch of learning will be
found to be composed principally of what we call “better class” people,
with a sprinkling of pupil teachers and sucking governesses.</p>

<p>Nor is this the fault of the masses themselves, as may perhaps be
conjectured; the mere circumstance of the prices charged for admission
in itself forming an insuperable barrier to the great majority having
any part or lot in the matter, to say nothing of the fact that the
whole apparatus is professedly set in motion for the benefit of the
middle-class public solely.</p>

<p>But however inadequate this minute increase in the volume of the
fertilizing waters of Literature and Science may be for the mighty
task of irrigating the parched and arid desert which stretches out in
measureless extent before us, yet I am fain to regard it as a favourable
omen—as a symptomatic indication that the “fountains of the great
deeps” of human ignorance are beginning to be broken up, and that the
tide <i>is</i> rising which, when it has reached its full height, will disseminate
the fruits of the Tree of Knowledge far and wide over the landscape so
that the lowly equally with the high-born may pluck and eat thereof.
The monster Cerberus has received a buffet on one of its three heads,
and the Hesperidean Gardens may ere long, I am sanguine enough to
hope, be entered by any thirsty passer-by without fear of molestation.</p>

<p>All this, however, is dreamy, unsubstantial verbiage. That it is not
also mere chimerical nonsense, which will not bear the strain of
practical application, I will attempt to show—always supposing as a
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span>
necessary preliminary, as in all the hypothetical propositions throughout
this paper, that that portion of the community who are nursed in the lap of
fortune are imbued with sympathetic feelings towards the less favoured
sharers of their common humanity, and do not object to take a little
trouble and bear a little charge by way of displaying their fellow-feeling.</p>

<p>Grant this premiss, and what follows, or something better, may
easily be rendered an accomplished fact.</p>

<p>The first step will be the formation of a council or committee, after
the manner before suggested, save that in this case we shall want an
infusion of men of culture who at the same time shall be good workers
and good philanthropists (a rare combination, but not an impossible
one, I venture to think, notwithstanding the seductions a life of Sybaritic
ease and delicate refinement specially offers to the scholar), in every
considerable town or group of villages throughout the length and
breadth of the land, with power over the district purse-strings, and
with no superior authority except the Minister or Secretary of State for
Education at Whitehall—for, of course, such a functionary will in those
happy times be quite as much a necessity as a Master of the Buckhounds—who
alone will have power to veto their proceedings and issue general
rules for their guidance.</p>

<p>If I had the ear of this all-important official, I should whisper to him
that in my view the best mode of enlightening the working classes would be
to take possession of three already-existing institutions, and enlarge their
dimensions so as to make of them real forces, distinctly visible, instead of
the hole-and-corner obscure trivialities they are now. These three institutions
are—1st, Free Libraries; 2nd, Lecture Halls; 3rd, Class Rooms.</p>

<p>1. To Free Libraries I have accorded the first place, because in all
probability it is there that the beneficial results will be more immediately
apparent, and the advantages offered will, in the first instance, be most considerably
made use of. The major portion of the huge and unwieldy mass
to be operated on would fly off at a tangent from the exactness and
method necessarily incident to formal lectures, and in a still greater
degree to class-work. It must first be left to itself to sprawl and struggle
at its own free-will; the restraining chain must not be too soon brought
into view; gradually and insensibly the quickening influence must be
brought to bear; the change from density to clear-headedness, from
sluggish inertness to mental activity, will not be effected in a moment;
not all at once will the spiritual part of the long-benighted assert its
claim to an equality with the animal part; desultory reading only will
impart a love for reading; odd waifs and strays of information picked
up just anyhow will alone create the desire for the acquisition of further
knowledge, and by imperceptible degrees the naturally well-regulated
mind will reject vagueness and demand exactness; having reached which
stage it will be fit to undergo the further regimen prescribed. A good
starting-point, however, will have been gained when our operatives
generally are imbued with a genuine love of books and obtain a
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span>
somewhat varied, if superficial, knowledge anent the salient features of
English literature.</p>

<p>These words, “<i>English</i> literature,” are used advisedly; for while
I would have every town of over 5000 inhabitants possessed of a
Free Library (varying in size according to the population), and every
village have its book-loan society, it would be well to insist on the greatest
and best of our own writers being well represented upon the shelves
of every institution of this character before venturing on translations
either of the ancient classics or modern foreign authors, even of
European reputation. Homer, Thucydides, Æschylus, Plato, Virgil, and
the rest, as well as Dante, Cervantes, Goethe, and the innumerable host
of Continental immortals, can very well wait a bit. We want to inspire
<i>British</i> operatives with a love of letters. In endeavouring to effect
this, shall we not give the foremost place to the productions of <i>British</i>
genius? We have to <i>form</i> a taste. Is it not desirable that, to begin
with at all events, this should be a <i>national</i> taste? But is not this the
very way, it may be asked, to foster insular prejudices, narrowness, and
bigotry? I reply, not necessarily, as many of our ablest <i>littérateurs</i>
have not hesitated to attack the various abuses, follies, and weaknesses
which crop up in these islands from time to time—some hurling denunciations
at them aglow with all the fervour of passion and intellect;
others piercing them with the sharp spear of satire; and others yet
again calmly but pitilessly holding them up to contempt in a train of
close reasoning. Many, too, in addition to lashing the vices peculiar to
their native country, have, in terms of generous eloquence, eulogized the
virtues of our neighbours. Therefore, the man who is disposed to wrap
himself up in a mantle of national self-glorification and self-righteousness
will not find that the hierarchs of our national literature are at all times
compliant enough to fasten the clasp for him.</p>

<p>But I have a further answer—<i>i.e.</i>, independently altogether of the
question whether the perusal of English works solely will or will not
have a tendency to nip the growing flower of cosmopolitanism in the
bud, the one essential point in training the English subject to think
is to train him to think in his own vernacular—to show him of what
mighty things his mother-tongue is capable, and to satisfy him that</p>

<div class="poem">
<span class="i0">“Age cannot weary, nor custom stale<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Its infinite variety;”<br /></span>
</div>

<p>and that if ever he, individually, wants to raise up his voice and make
himself heard on any subject that interests him or his fellows, he must
not fritter away his attention on more distant objects, but concentrate
his gaze on those which immediately surround him.</p>

<p>This view may appear somewhat contradictory to the one expressed
when dealing with the subject of Emigration; but really it is not so.
The leaving behind the special spot of earth where one drew one’s first
breath, played as a boy, saw his first sweetheart, and grew up to manhood,
the parting from old friends and long-familiar objects, may and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span>
does entail a severe struggle, and inflict many a bitter pang; but it is
unavoidable, and so must be submitted to. It is otherwise with home
ideas, habits, modes of thought, literature. These will serve to mitigate
the poignancy of separation from one’s native land, will intertwine
themselves more closely round one’s affections by reason of that very
separation, and be the means of causing miniature Englands to arise in
far-off regions, and in various degrees of latitude and longitude. While
releasing as cheerfully as may be what we <i>must</i> let go, let us hug more
closely still that which we <i>can</i> retain.</p>

<p>To return: In a well-equipped Free Library no standard British author
should be conspicuous by his absence. The poets, from Chaucer and
Gower to Tennyson and Browning; the dramatists, from Marlowe and
Shakspeare to W. S. Gilbert and Tom Taylor; the <i>modern</i> historians,
from Hume and Gibbon to Froude and Freeman; the modern theologians,
from Hooker and Jeremy Taylor to Canon Farrar and the Dean of
Westminster; the modern essayists, from the projectors of the <i>Tatler</i> and
<i>Spectator</i> to the contributors to the current Reviews and Magazines;
the philosophers, the leaders in all departments of science, should be
there; the best writers of prose fiction, also, from Fielding and Goldsmith
to Trollope and George Eliot, should be well represented. The
most profound and the most volatile will alike find sufficient to occupy
their attention here for some time. The “Anglican paddock” (to
misapply a now well-known term) will afford plenty of grazing ground
to cattle of moderate appetites for a considerable period; and when it
is exhausted, why, then, there are toothsome grasses in endless profusion
to be cropped over the boundary fence.</p>

<p>2. With reference to Lecture Halls, these ought to be nearly as
plentiful as churches both in town and country, and can with proper
management be made to serve two ends—the carrying forward the
work begun at the Free Library, and the rousing from torpidity those
whom even that useful institution would fail to reach; for as many
would only be led to attend the lecture through the library, so there
are many with whom the contrary would hold good, as many a dormant,
beer-sodden soul would consent to be carried off for an hour or two to
a lecture hall who could never be persuaded to sit down in cold blood
to the perusal of a book, although such book might be written in the
most fascinating and brilliant style imaginable: the unused eyes would
soon begin to ache, the palsied brain soon begin to numb; whereas the
speaker, if a good one, and his heart in his subject, would contrive to rivet
the man’s attention, despite of himself, by the magnetism of enthusiasm,
and he would carry away with him some sort of idea—muddled and
distorted probably, but still an <i>idea</i>—of what it was all about.</p>

<p>Penny Readings interspersed with music have been very much derided
by our erudite critics, I think without sufficient cause. These really
harmless, if not very high-class gatherings, blending together the
ingredients of a certain kind of instruction and of entertainment, were
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>
doubtlessly called forth by a genuine desire to familiarize the lower
orders of the people with some of the more dramatic passages in our
literature, and to render visible to them a higher intellectual standard
than the tap-room and the music-hall had made them acquainted with.
It was a happy thought to mingle singing and playing with the readings.
The introduction of these not only served to take off a possible monotony
which might otherwise have been felt, but added attractions really
elevating in their influence, the status and general surroundings of the
auditory being taken into consideration. There is no need to pry too
curiously into the petty vanities which prompted this elocutionist or
that vocalist to make an appearance in public, nor to speculate too
closely upon the disproportion between the ludicrous extravagance of
the efforts often made by incompetent aspirants to obtain fame, and the
very modest modicum and evanescent character of that article vouchsafed
in return. All this is nothing to the purpose. The simple
query is,—Have these things, known as “Penny Readings,” in ever so
slight a degree, fulfilled the object of their existence as that object is
generally understood? If an affirmative answer can be given (as I
certainly believe it can) to that question, then are they entitled to
honest praise, and not to supercilious contempt.</p>

<p>However, having deposited my little offering at this humble shrine as I
passed by, I am free to confess that if we never get any further than this
on the road towards the mental improvement of the million, the march of
intellect will be a very short march indeed. But it will not—it cannot
stop here. The universal law of progress forbids the idea; and in some
form or another the irresistible impetus to advance will be felt and obeyed.</p>

<p>Meantime, no better means, so far as I see, appearing for the moment
to be available, I fall back upon my pet project of lectures, to be
delivered every night (Sundays excepted) from the middle of September
to the middle of May in every year, in every one of the multitudinous
halls built for the purpose, by men or women well versed in the several
subjects upon which they discourse.</p>

<p>Failing the possibility of procuring a sufficient number of lecturers
who could spare the time necessary to compose original matter for the
purpose, it would be by no means a bad plan, I think, to employ good
and experienced hands to condense and compress standard works on
different subjects into such a compass as to occupy two or three evenings,
and hand these digests over to practised elocutionists to be <i>read</i>. Take
history, for example. Prescott’s “Conquests of Mexico and Peru,”
Motley’s “Rise of the Dutch Republic,” Irving’s “Conquest of
Granada,” Carlyle’s “French Revolution,” or Hepworth Dixon’s “Her
Majesty’s Tower,” are peculiarly well adapted to undergo this process.
The absorbing interest of the incidents described could not fail to
engage the attention of the audience; and I cannot help thinking that
the offended <i>manes</i> of such of the above-named great ones as have
departed from amongst us would be appeased when it was represented
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span>
to them that this mutilation of their invaluable legacies to posterity
had been conducted with due reverence, and solely for the purpose of
introducing them to a far wider (and, perchance, not less appreciative)
audience than even their exalted talents could otherwise have commanded.
As to the still-living ones, perhaps before taking the liberty
suggested with their literary offspring, it might be courteous to ask
their permission, and I feel confident they would not be churlish
enough to withhold it. I may be reminded that there would still be
publishers and owners of copyright to be dealt with; but I leave
suggestions as to the best means of negotiating with these awful entities
to persons of greater experience than myself.</p>

<p>Obviously this lecture-hall business, like most of my other theories,
necessarily involves considerable expenditure; but if anything is to be
done, opulence must feel for indigence not only in heart but in pocket.</p>

<p>3. A thorough and unstinted employment of the means above
indicated will accomplish much towards the emancipation of our helots
from that thraldom of ignorance which gives to the more galling
thraldom of caste its sole <i>raison d’être</i>. But there is yet one thing
needed, the <i>utilization</i> of knowledge acquired, and this can only be
attained by dint of laborious and unintermitting class-work. The sacred
flame may be kindled in the breast by desultory and omnivorous reading,
but the light emitted is as uncertain as that of a wandering marsh-fire—it
wants <i>focussing</i> to be of any use to its possessor or his species.
And it is in the <i>class</i>, under the guidance of a gifted and genial teacher,
that this operation can best be performed. It is here that the finishing
touch must be applied; here the rounding-off take place; here the
heterogeneous be brought into homogeneity, and the discordant be
reduced to harmony and system.</p>

<p>If these things are so, the problems which present themselves to be
resolved are:—Given certain millions of untrained intellects in crying
need of class tuition scattered over certain thousands of square miles in
unequal proportions—how to provide sufficient building accommodation
to meet the exigencies of the case? and given an uncertain but confessedly
immense mass of torpidity and stagnation—how to infuse the
necessary leaven into it to quicken it and arouse its latent forces?</p>

<p>I answer as to the first proposition—Require the architects of the
multitudinous lecture halls aforesaid to submit plans to you, which shall
comprise sections not only of the main building but of three or four
adjuncts thereto suitable for class-rooms, after the style of the chapels
nestling under the wings of our old cathedrals, or the annexes thrown
out at convenient angles from our modern industrial exhibitions for the
display of specialities. These would add comparatively little to the
original cost of the structure, and save a great deal of time and trouble
in hunting up eligible sites, and, when found, negotiating terms of
purchase. As to the second proposition, make a <i>liberal</i> distribution of
prizes part of your system, so liberal that not only proficiency would be
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span>
certain of obtaining a reward, but plodding and persevering mediocrity also.
Constant attendance, combined with such written answers to questions
as evinced that the pupil was making an effort, should, however imperfectly
the answers were framed, insure the possession of a prize at the end
of every session. With such materials to work upon, a free use of stimulants
to exertion must form no inconsiderable part of the programme.</p>

<p>Again, no charge whatever must be made for admission to the classes.
Indeed, the entire domain of adult poor education must be as free as United
Italy—free from the Alps of the library to the Adriatic of the class-room.</p>

<p>Lastly, no restriction should be made as to the age or sex of the
scholar. I am of opinion that no greater incentive to emulation can be
offered to either man or woman than the consciousness that they are
associated with co-workers or competitors of the opposite sex.</p>

<p>It would be travelling out of the record were I ever so faintly to
attempt to enter into details as to the mode in which class-teaching
could most advantageously be conducted, or to endeavour to shadow
forth what I conceive to be the regulations best adapted for the purpose.
No general rules would be found competent to meet ever-varying special
conditions. All this must inevitably be left to conform itself to the
peculiarities of the respective groups of the taught and the idiosyncrasies
of the individual teachers.</p>

<h4>Amusements.</h4>

<p>On this last, but not least, division of the subject, I need not dilate
at very great length. Much has been written with reference to it of
late with which I cordially agree.</p>

<p>No one can help being sensible of the melancholy fact that the
tendency of many of our so-called entertainments is debasing and
degrading in the last degree. It is difficult to imagine anything much
more demoralizing in every aspect—anything which appears to be more
utterly without redeeming features—than our music-halls. Dances,
which are simply unnatural contortions on the part of the male performers,
and indelicate exhibitions on the part of the female ones; songs,
which are utterly idiotic and meaningless, except when their meaning
is indecency, sounding the very lowest depths of imbecility, and having
no literary merit save <i>double entendres</i> of the most vulgar description;
the whole taking place in an atmosphere redolent with the fumes of
beer, gin, and tobacco,—such is the pabulum provided for our delectation
through this particular medium. Much the same poisonous
mixture is administered at our tea-gardens and other places where we
most do congregate. Is it a marvel, then, that our young men waste
their strength in drunkenness, and our young women stray from the
narrow path? Is it wonderful that when you respectables meet us
abroad on Bank Holidays, or Derby or Boat Race days, we comport
ourselves in ruffianly fashion, and greet the ears of your dames and
damsels with expressions which it is not good for them to hear?
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span></p>

<p>Ultra-exclusives! those of you who are most deeply impressed with
the desirability of keeping us in our proper places, and are offended if
we pass “between the wind and your nobility,” to you most of all do
I address myself, and take the liberty of saying that on <i>you</i> rests the
onus of providing better and more healthy recreations for us; for needs
must that at times the most fastidious of you will find yourselves in
the midst of us, and it will interest you even more deeply than others
that we should not sink into unmitigated and universal rascaldom, the
only natural goal at which the pursuit of such pleasures as those above-named
is likely to land us. Give us attractions of a less baneful
character, and wean us from these cesspools of infamy. To you it is
specially important that this matter should receive attention. Do not,
however, seek to do the work half-way; do not attempt to take away the
means of recreation we have—evil as they are—until substitutes are
furnished; it will not be convenient to you that the people should have
too much time to <i>brood</i>; it will be safer for you that we should be
<i>mercurial</i> rather than that we should be <i>morose</i>; in one mood or the
other, however you may strive to ignore us, we shall continue to exist in
tangible form and be distinctly visible to your perceptions.</p>

<p>I like not threats or innuendoes, however, and say no more concerning
this matter.</p>

<p>Time was when holy-days were frequent, when gorgeous pageants
feasted the eyes of our forefathers—times of Maypoles and morrice-dancers,
of roasted oxen and sheep, of conduits running with wine and
milk: I say not I wish these to return. Much I fear that all was not
pure, pastoral, Arcadian simplicity amidst these poetic scenes, fascinating
as they are to the imagination. I doubt not the taint of vice was
there, and the ghastly presence of misery and sorrow, and I do not
regret them—let them go.</p>

<p>What, then, do I suggest? Aware of the risk I run in having it
imputed to me that my suggestions have already been too numerous,
I will, with brevity, venture yet one more.</p>

<p>Repetition is vexatious; notwithstanding which, unification is imperative,
and committees must again be called into requisition.</p>

<p>Cricket-clubs, quoit-clubs, bowling-clubs, even skittle-clubs <i>ad libitum</i>,
in summer; ballad concerts, dramatic performances, &amp;c., in winter,
under the same auspices. Membership extended to all comers, fee
payable one shilling per annum in monthly instalments; the expulsion
or suspension for a longer or shorter term—according to the more or
less heinous nature of the offence—of any member for bad language,
intoxication, or other misbehaviour; the gradual unbending of the rich
and the cultured, and their condescending to grace the sports with
their occasional presence, thereby infusing a spirit of refinement into
them; the prohibition of betting or <i>over</i>-drinking,—these are, shortly
and imperfectly stated, the remedies I would suggest.</p>

<p>To conclude the whole matter. We, the industrious poor of this
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span>
realm—the hard-working classes—are in pressing need of help now, in
this present time. This, I believe, is confessed on all hands, diverse
and contradictory as the theories how such help could best be given
may be. The question at issue is not whether ameliorations are
desirable or the contrary, but in what manner to bring them about, and
how to be certain that it is bread which is bestowed, and not a stone.</p>

<p>I do not claim to have solved this enigma, or to have invented a
millennium. I simply assert my belief that some of my propositions may
contain germs capable of being nurtured into hopeful possibilities.</p>

<p>As I have selected four principal points in which improvements are
required—health, pocket, mind, and amusements—so have I striven to
indicate four principal modes which I think best calculated to attain the
desired end, and which for the most part must come from <i>without</i> our
borders—namely, sympathy, earnestness, money, and centralized organization—all
being essential; the last-named especially being so, for it
may be regarded as an irrefragable verity that every movement to be
really efficacious must be <i>national</i>, and not parochial.</p>

<p>I look for many objections on both sides of the temperate zone, on
the waters of which alone I elect to voyage. The frigid will aver that
I expect too much, that my notions are Utopian and chimerical to the
last degree, and the nostrums prescribed empirical and baneful; that
it is not to be supposed sensible people will take all this trouble, and
rush into such reckless expenditure in a project so visionary. To
such my only answer is,—Where the return is to be great the investment
must be great also. The torrid, on the other hand, will say I am not
sufficiently thorough; that the only means of elevating the poor is by
lugging the wealthy down to their level, abrogating dignities, distributing
riches, abolishing ownership in lands and corporeal hereditaments.
To these my reply will be,—Evil will the day be which shall dawn on
such devil’s-sabbath employments as these. Levelling <i>up</i>wards is laudable;
levelling <i>down</i>wards is execrable. I would in nowise interfere
with the least of these institutions. The overthrow of dynasties will
not advantage us, nor will a general scramble conduce to our lasting
welfare. I am a sceptic as to the benefits to be derived from revolution,
although professing myself a warm admirer of reformation, as I
understand the word—<i>re</i>-formation.</p>

<p>Neither do I anticipate that the time will ever come, under the best
devised systems, when poverty will altogether cease out of the land.
Evil will there be, and good also, while the world stands. This, however,
should be no excuse for indifferentism in the work of lessening the
sum-total of the evil, and increasing the sum-total of the good.</p>

<p>And so Lazarus unmoors his fragile boat, and launches it, unmanned
and untended, on the bosom of the stream,—to meet its fate.</p>

<p class="author"><span class="smcap">Henry J. Miller.</span></p>

<hr />

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span></p>

<h2>THE FORMS AND COLOURS OF LIVING CREATURES.</h2>

<p>In the Essay on Animals and Plants, which appeared in the
September Number of this Review, the names were given of the
principal groups in which the prodigious multitude of living creatures
(existing or known to have existed) have been classified by naturalists.
It was therein also indicated that these various groups, and all the
subdivisions of such groups, are distinguished one from another by
variations in the forms and structures of the creatures which compose
them. This fact alone would prove that very many differences in form
must exist; but, indeed, a very slight knowledge and a very cursory
examination of animals and plants would suffice to show this even
to any one who knew nothing of the scope or nature of biological
classification. In truth, to the non-scientific observer who feels an
interest in living things, the difficulty may seem to be rather how
to find general resemblances than how to detect differences between
creatures which seem so totally diverse as do humming birds from whales,
bees from buffaloes, or the numerous African herds of antelopes from the
grasses on which they feed.</p>

<p>Nevertheless it was pointed out in the second Essay of this
series<a name="FNanchor_56" id="FNanchor_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a>
that all living creatures do agree to a certain extent in the form and
structure of their bodies, inasmuch as their bodies are always bounded by
curved lines and surfaces, while, if we divide the body of any animal
or plant its structure may always be seen to be heterogeneous—that is
to say, composed of different substances, even the simplest showing a
variety of minute particles (granules) variously distributed throughout its interior. It has also been pointed
out<a name="FNanchor_57" id="FNanchor_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a>
that all living creatures agree in beginning life in the form of a small rounded mass of protoplasm. But
all animals and plants further agree in that each kind has its own proper
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span>
size, shape, structure, and colour, and each (as we shall hereafter see)
shows a positive unity in its fundamental constitution, co-existing with
the heterogeneity above referred to.</p>

<p>But though each kind has its own proper size, shape, structure, and
colour, yet these vary more or less in different individuals, and the degrees
of variability are different in different kinds both of animals and plants.</p>

<p>As to size, although most living creatures have certain limits which
they rarely exceed or fall below, yet many organisms vary greatly in this
respect. Thus, that familiar weed, the common centaury (<i>Erythræa
centaurium</i>), may vary in height—according to the soil and other
external conditions—from half an inch to five feet.</p>

<p>As to figure and structure there is more constancy, and the amount
of variation which may in these respects be found between different
individuals of the same animal species, is generally but slight. In plants
and in plant-like animals much greater differences exist as to external
configuration; but even in them the internal structure of each species
varies but little.</p>

<p>Colour is a character which some readers may be disposed to
regard as extremely inconstant. We are familiar with many differently
coloured varieties of our cultivated flowers; and white blackbirds,
and black leopards are not very uncommon objects. Nevertheless,
colour is really a character of much constancy, and is one not only
constantly present in different individuals of one kind of plant or
animal, but is one constantly present in particular groups of kinds.</p>

<p>Thus, for example, all the English plants of the dandelion order
which have opposite leaves, have yellow flowers, with the single
exception of the eupatory (<i>Eupatorium cannabinum</i>), and whole groups of
butterflies are respectively characterized as being blue, or white, or yellow.</p>

<p>We have seen that the life of every living being is accompanied
by, and may be described as, a series of adjustments of action and
structure to external conditions which surround it. Accordingly we
may expect to find that the sizes, shapes, structures, and colours of
living beings bear relations, which are in very many cases obvious, to
their external circumstances, as directly favouring their nutrition,
reproduction, or preservation from external injury.</p>

<p>Every living creature must be either fixed (like a rooted tree), or
capable of spontaneously moving, or of being passively drifted from place
to place, and must have a structure and figure suitable to one or other
of these conditions.</p>

<p>Again, every living creature, whether free or fixed, is either a
terrestrial, an aquatic, or an aërial organism; and it may be fitted
to live in any two, or even in all three of these conditions—as, for
example, is the swan. If terrestrial, it may inhabit the surface of the
earth only, or it may occasionally or habitually dwell beneath it.
The structure, forms, and even colours of organisms are in most cases
plainly adapted to their modes of life in the above respects.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span></p>

<p>Thus, any living creature, which is fixed to the surface of the earth,
must either adhere to it by having one side or portion of its body
spread out and adjusted to irregularities in the supporting surface, or
else by sending prolongations of its substance into the substance of
the supporting body, as a plant sends its roots into the soil. Such
prolongations, moreover, must (in order to hold fast) either sink deeply
or else expand, at a slight depth, into a rounded or discoidal mass,
or into radiating processes whereby the whole structure may be
securely anchored.</p>

<p>This special modification of form, again, may or may not be
accompanied by certain further modifications of structure, according
as such rooting parts are to serve, as mere holdfasts, simply for
attachment, or (as in most plants) for the absorption of food also.</p>

<p>Another modification is also correlated with these conditions. We
have seen<a name="FNanchor_58" id="FNanchor_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a>
that an interchange of gases takes place between each
organism and its surrounding medium. But such interchange cannot
take place in the subterranean part of the body, and a corresponding
difference of structure between such subterranean part and other parts
must therefore obtain.</p>

<p>Again, as to colour, we find differences which are evidently related to
the different degrees in which different parts of a living body are exposed
to the influence of light. Such contrasts notoriously exist, not only
between the green parts of plants above the soil and the lighter coloured
roots, but between the foliage of a plant which is exposed to sun light
and another of the same kind kept in a dark cellar. Many animals which
live in permanent darkness are colourless, as, <i>e.g.</i>, the
<i>Proteus</i>;<a name="FNanchor_59" id="FNanchor_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a> but yet
this is not an invariable rule, some, as the mole, being of a dark colour.</p>

<p>The forms of organisms are evidently often directly related to surrounding
influences. A plant or plant-like animal fixed to the soil
may be so fixed that light, air, food, friends and enemies can have access
equally on all sides or not. Thus, a tree so placed that light and air
are excluded on one side, will not grow freely towards that side, but
only in directions from whence light and air have access. A coral reef
increases much more rapidly towards the open sea (the waves of which
bring in food and facilitate gaseous interchange) than towards an adjacent
shore.</p>

<p>The mere contiguity of parts will often affect the form of organisms.
Thus, in many flowers parts which are adjacent become dwarfed, while
others which are freely exposed become fully developed, as we see in
the flowers of many <i>Umbelliferæ</i>, or plants of the parsley, fennel, and
hemlock order.</p>

<p>The shapes of flowers bear relation (as we shall see later) to their
need for attracting insects which by their visits effect the development
of seed, and for repelling others the access of which would be hurtful.</p>

<p>The avoidance of enemies may be so effected by an organism that
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span>
their access may be made impossible save in one direction, the extent
of vulnerable surface even in that direction being minimized. We have
an example of such a condition in those worms which live in calcareous
tubes, and which are some of those called “tubicolous
annelids.”<a name="FNanchor_60" id="FNanchor_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a></p>

<p>Again, the medium in which an organism lives—whether aërial or
aqueous—has an important relation with its form. A delicate seaweed,
the beautifully radiating form of which is a just object of admiration as
long as it is supported by its denser natural medium (the sea water),
collapses into an amorphous mass when withdrawn thence into the thin
air. Obviously a much greater rigidity and strength of structure is
needed to support an aërial organism than an aquatic one, unless the
former can support itself on other solid structures, such as rocks or
trees. In the latter case the form attained may be very elongated and
slender, as in the many creeping and climbing plants, which are so often
furnished with processes for grasping (tendrils) to aid them in their
mode of life.</p>

<p>An aërial fixed organism, if it does not rise from the surface of the
earth, cannot spread itself very far without developing other points of
support—without rooting again. This re-rooting is a familiar phenomenon
in many plants, as, <i>e.g.</i>, the strawberry. But even a shrub
like the common bramble (which is not itself prostrate, but which sends
out extraordinarily prolonged branches) is aided by such a process.
The ends of its long branches apply themselves to the ground and begin
to pierce its surface, the incipient leaves of its terminal bud becoming
metamorphosed into roots.</p>

<p>An aquatic fixed organism, however, may extend to a very great
length, freely floating without effecting any such fresh attachment. Thus the seaweed
<i>Laminaria digitata</i><a name="FNanchor_61" id="FNanchor_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a>
will spread over a circle 12 feet in diameter, while <i>L. longicornis</i> grows in the form of an elongated
riband, from 8 to 12 feet in length and 2 or 3 feet wide. The giant
form <i>Macrocystis</i> (with a much more subdivided outline) may extend to
the extraordinary length of 700 feet.</p>

<p>The conditions under which needful gaseous interchange can be
effected and food obtained by different living creatures, govern in
various other ways the forms of their bodies.</p>

<p>Thus, if it is helpful to the life of a creature to submit as large a
surface of its body as possible to the influence of light, or to the action
of air or water, then for this purpose its body must be expanded and
its expanded parts divided and subdivided as they extend in different
directions. It is for this reason that trees branch, and that their
branches and twigs divide and subdivide as they do. It is for this
reason also that their branches do not grow out one above another in
precisely the same direction, but, on the contrary, grow in such a
manner that each one may overshadow those immediately beneath as
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span>
little as may be. Similarly and for the same reason leaves are developed
mostly in an alternating fashion, so that each may be able to
expose its green surface to the light and air as much as possible.</p>

<p>Plant-like animals which grow up in an arborescent manner from a
fixed base do not generally branch in so regularly alternating a mode
as do plants, and in some cases their successive branches may even be
regularly superimposed. This is due to their not requiring, as plants
do, that their surface should be very extensively exposed to light,
neither their gaseous interchange nor their nutrition being impaired
by such superposition. The water which carries to them both the
nutritious particles on which they feed and the gases they respire, will
act with nearly or quite the same efficiency in either arrangement
of their parts.</p>

<p>If the exigences of life require any organism to retain much fluid
within it, this circumstance may lead to its assumption of a dilated
more or less globular form, as in the melon cactus, and, to a less degree,
in the leaves of the common stonecrop.</p>

<p>But the conditions under which alone certain fixed organisms can
obtain their food may govern also their internal structure. Thus, we
shall see that in plants which feed by absorbing matters through their
roots, an internal arrangement has to be effected for distributing material
thus obtained, and conveying it upwards through the stem. So, again,
many fixed animals need a greater supply of food and gases than they
can obtain from the water which bathes or may reach them without
effort on their parts. Such animals may be provided with special internal
structures, which cause currents of water to flow towards them,
and very often to penetrate within them, as in the shell <i>Mya</i> or the
razor shell.<a name="FNanchor_62" id="FNanchor_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a></p>

<p>Fixed subterranean creatures are rare, but such do exist, as, for
example, the truffle (<i>Tuber cibarium</i>). Surrounding influences must in such
instances be alike on all sides, while the imbedded position of such
organisms render superfluous the development of any elongated process
for the purpose of fixing them. Such creatures, then, have a spheroidal
figure, and neither internally nor externally are their structures developed
in special directions.<a name="FNanchor_63" id="FNanchor_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a></p>

<p>The fixed organisms which are the most aërial in their habits are
attached to elevated objects, such as trees, and necessarily have a portion
of their frame set apart to fix them to the object which supports them.
The most conspicuous creatures of this kind are, perhaps, the plants
termed “Epiphytes,” on account of this habit. Amongst them may be
mentioned the beautiful orchids called “air plants,” and the familiar
mistletoe. Other vegetable organisms—the multitude of creeping
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span>
plants—rear themselves to great heights by the aid of their
more robust brothers, but they can hardly be reckoned as aërial
organisms.<a name="FNanchor_64" id="FNanchor_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a></p>

<p>The colours which plants display have sometimes a singular relation
to the mountain elevations or geographical positions they inhabit, but
these considerations will be aptly treated of in the relations borne by living
creatures to physical conditions and to one another.</p>

<p>Living creatures which are capable of moving or being freely moved
about, present us with similar but more marked differences.</p>

<p>Certain aquatic creatures drift passively about (borne by streams or
currents) with no permanent relation between any fixed portion of their
bodies and the medium which transports them. Such creatures being
equally acted on on all sides by surrounding agencies might be expected
(like the subterranean truffle) to exhibit a spheroidal figure, with only
one kind of surface upon their whole exterior. This is just what we
find to be the case in a variety of more or less minute organisms, such, <i>e.g.</i>
as <i>Myxastrum radians</i> and
<i>Magosphæra planula</i>.<a name="FNanchor_65" id="FNanchor_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a></p>

<p>The former of these consists, at one stage of its existence, of a small
globular mass of protoplasm, from the whole periphery of which a multitude
of fine pseudopodia radiate. When about to reproduce, the
creature retracts its pseudopodia, and forms around its exterior a
structureless coat or cyst, an action which takes place frequently in
lowly organisms, and is called their process of <i>encystment</i>. The contents
of the cyst then divides into separate bodies, which escape by the
rupture of the cyst. Each of these bodies is enclosed in a silicious
case with an aperture at one end, whence its contained protoplasm
issues, and, having so issued, assumes a spherical shape.</p>

<p><i>Magosphæra</i> is another small creature which goes through a remarkable
series of changes, the greater number of which exemplify the ball-like
shape of body alike on all sides.</p>

<p>Wherever the surface of the body is covered by pseudopodia, those
processes, inasmuch as they have a power of spontaneous movement,
enable the creatures possessing them slightly to aid or to resist the
drifting action of the water in which they float.</p>

<p>But a living organism may be devoid of any definite shape whatever,
as in <i>Protamœba</i>,<a name="FNanchor_66" id="FNanchor_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a>
which consists of a mere particle of protoplasm, from
which irregular-shaped processes of unequal size are irregularly protruded
in every direction, so that the form of the creature may be
said to be quite indeterminate.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span>
The bodies of almost all organisms have, however, more or less
definite forms, which may be all classed under seven morphological
categories.</p>

<p>(1). The simplest form of all exemplifies <i>spherical symmetry</i>, and
is that which we have seen in the truffle, the radiolarian, the volvox,
<i>Myxastrum</i> and <i>Magosphæra</i>. In this spherical form any number of
axes drawn through the creature in any direction are equal.</p>

<p>(2). The next organic form is one in which the body sphere is more
or less elongated at its poles, the latter being equal and similar. In
such an organism we have one axis longer than any one of the others
and central, while from this axis symmetrical radii can be drawn in all
directions. This form may be said to exemplify <i>equipolar symmetry</i>,
and such is found in some radiolarians, in some small parasites
(<i>Gregarinida</i>),<a name="FNanchor_67" id="FNanchor_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a>
and others.</p>

<p>(3). The next morphological category may be spoken of as <i>unipolar
symmetry</i>. Bodies which exemplify it are like those included in
the last category, save that the two poles of the body are not alike.</p>

<p>Instances of this symmetry are to be sought in creatures which have
one end of their body fixed, or which always or mostly move with the
same end of the body in front, and thus have their two extremities in
more or less constantly different relations to surrounding influences.</p>

<p>The lowest worms and sponges may serve as examples of this symmetry
in its simplest expression. As also may the curious compound
tunicary called <i>Pyrosoma</i>.<a name="FNanchor_68" id="FNanchor_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a>
In all such creatures the body does not
extend out in the form of lateral prolongations.</p>

<p>But in many others it does send out processes on all sides, and in
various directions, as in most trees and all plants which have a definite
axis of growth, so that unipolar symmetry is the predominant symmetry
in the vegetable kingdom.</p>

<p>(4). But unipolar symmetry with diverging outgrowths leads us to
the next category which may be called <i>radial symmetry</i>. Under this
head are included the forms of such creatures as possess unipolar bodies
from which equal and corresponding outgrowths radiate in different
directions.</p>

<p>We have examples of this in the starfishes, in the sea anemones, and
in such plants as the melon cactus. But the outgrowths may project
in only four directions, each being at right angles with the two neighbouring
outgrowths. We thus get a crucial form of radiation, in which
the body may be described as having one main axis (in the direction of
motion) crossed by two other shorter but equal axes at right angles to
it and to each other.</p>

<p>We have an example of this in
<i>Tetraplatia volitans</i>,<a name="FNanchor_69" id="FNanchor_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a>
an aquatic creature with an elongated body, which presents four distinguishable
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span>
longitudinal surfaces, of which each opposite and corresponding pair
is hardly distinguishable from one another.</p>

<p>(5). This form leads us directly to that kind of symmetry which is
predominant in the animal kingdom and which is called <i>bilateral
symmetry</i>. Forms of this kind exhibit four aspects which may be
distinguished as right and left, dorsal and ventral. The body here
presents a long axis (in the direction of motion) crossed by two shorter
axes at right angles to it and to each other. Of these shorter axes, one
connects the dorsal and ventral surfaces, while the other connects the
lateral (right and left) surfaces, and these two axes may be, and
generally are, unequal. All worms, insects, mollusks, fishes, birds,
reptiles, and beasts, are examples of creatures with bilateral symmetry.
The dorsal and ventral aspects of the body generally differ in correspondence
with the different relations to surrounding conditions which
they usually bear, as notably in snakes and creatures which glide with
their bellies applied to the surface of the ground.</p>

<p>(6). The last kind of symmetry which here needs notice is that
termed <i>serial symmetry</i>. In the creatures which exhibit it we have a
body which is not only almost always bilaterally symmetrical but which
is made up of a succession of similar parts, forming a series along its
main or longitudinal axis. Insects, crabs, lobsters, and other allied
forms give us examples of serial symmetry, but this is perhaps best seen
in such animals as thousand legs and hundred legs—millipedes and
centipedes.</p>

<p>Besides the fundamental distinctions which depend upon the kind of
symmetry governing the form of any living being, other subordinate
differences exist respectively related to the conditions under which the
various activities necessary for life have to be carried on. Such activities
are the needful gaseous interchange, the processes of reproduction,
and the acquisition of food. Thus, the most intimate relation exists
between the form of the body and the manner in which locomotion has
to be effected, whether by the whole body or by processes projecting
from it. If the latter, then whether by paddling or jumping; if by
the whole body, then whether by lateral or vertical bendings of that body.</p>

<p>Thus, we see that fishes, which swim by lateral flexure of the body,
have the tail expanded vertically; while in porpoises, which require
vertical flexions (to come rapidly to the surface to breathe), the tail is
expanded horizontally. On the other hand, creatures which swim not
by either kind of body flexure, but by a paddling action only, have the
tail shortened, as we see in swans and turtles. Further details of this
kind will be more appropriately treated of in an Essay devoted
exclusively to the consideration of the forms of animals.</p>

<p>There are a multitude of aquatic creatures which cannot be properly
spoken of as either “fixed” or “mobile,” for they are in fact both.
They are creatures which move about by the help of others, being themselves
fixed to other creatures which are actively locomotive.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span></p>

<p>Thus, sea-snails, lobsters, fishes, whales, and even ships, bear
about with them sometimes lowly-organized plants; but often other
animals, permanently fixed to and growing parasitically upon them and
having the shape of their body suited to their peculiar situation.</p>

<p>Often such parasites form flattened encrustations on their involuntary
hosts—as is the case with the acorn shells or sessile
barnacles.<a name="FNanchor_70" id="FNanchor_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a> Others
have elongated bodies, which stream through the water with the motions
of the creatures carrying them. We see this in confervoid growths,
also in ordinary barnacles, and in certain modified crab-like creatures,
such as <i>Lerneocera</i>.<a name="FNanchor_71" id="FNanchor_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a></p>

<p>These creatures fix themselves to their movable supports by means
similar to those by which other creatures secure themselves to stationary
supports. Thus, some of these do so by means of expanded disks, which
fit accurately to the supporting surface, while certain parasites fix themselves
by means of ingrowing prolongations or root-like processes, as in
the <i>Rhizocephala</i>.<a name="FNanchor_72" id="FNanchor_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a>
Others, again, adhere by the intervention of hooks
and suckers, and this is especially the case with such as fix themselves
internally and live perpetually bathed (as the
tape-worms<a name="FNanchor_73" id="FNanchor_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a> do) in the
nutritious fluids contained within the bowels of the creatures they infest.</p>

<p>Terrestrial mobile organisms can, of course, only be moved by their
own efforts, or by the efforts of other organisms.</p>

<p>The simplest terrestrial locomotion is like that of the aquatic
<i>Amœba<a name="FNanchor_74" id="FNanchor_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a> primitiva</i>,
and is performed by land <i>Amœbæ</i>; and the curious
plant <i>Myxomycetes</i><a name="FNanchor_75" id="FNanchor_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a>
also moves in a substantially similar manner. This
very curious organism consists of a net-work of protoplasmic threads,
which spread over decaying leaves and stems. The threads exhibit
streams of granules flowing within them, and they give out processes like
pseudopodia, while the whole complex mass can slowly creep over a
supporting surface, which it thus slowly flows over by its branching
processes.</p>

<p>Other lowly plants propel themselves by means of a pair of filamentary
protoplasmic threads, which vibrate actively, and are therefore
called vibratile cilia. As an example may be mentioned the
<i>Protococcus<a name="FNanchor_76" id="FNanchor_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a>
nivalis</i>, the little spheroidal alga, which abounds on Alpine summits and
in Arctic regions.</p>

<p>As in aquatic, so in terrestrial organisms, external form is intimately
related to modes of motion. Thus, locomotion may be effected by
undulations of the whole body, as often in serpents and terrestrial vermiform
animals. It may, on the contrary, be effected by the action of
levers projecting from the surface of the body, <i>i.e.</i>, by limbs, and these
may be multitudinous and minute, as in hundred legs and thousand
legs, or few and large, as in beasts. Moreover, the motions may be
movements of pulling or of pushing, or by combinations of these, or by
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span>
jumps, which may be effected in various manners, the consideration of
which will find a fitting place in an Essay devoted to “Motion.”</p>

<p>Again, terrestrial, like aquatic, organisms often involuntarily carry
about with them other living creatures which have fixed themselves to their
bodies. Thus, the fruits, or seeds, of many plants (as, <i>e.g.</i>, those of the
common Agrimony, <i>Agrimonia eupatoria</i>) are beset with hooks or bristles
which readily adhere to the coats of passing animals, and so gain a
greater diffusion than they could otherwise obtain. A very remarkable
form of the kind is <i>Martynia proboscidea</i> (called Testa di <i>Quaglia</i> by the
Italians), which has a pair of curved and pointed processes like the
tusks of an elephant, which are several inches long. It is notorious
for adhering to clothes, &amp;c. Other noteworthy plants are <i>Uncaria
procumbeus</i>, or the grapple plant of South Africa and
<i>Harpagophytum</i>,<a name="FNanchor_77" id="FNanchor_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a>
the fruit of which is provided with hooked processes. Those of <i>Harpagophytum</i>
spread out in all directions, and are of different lengths, with
sharp hooks, variously turned, so that its power of clinging is extreme.
The seed, with all its processes, is so large as to fill the hand when
grasped. It is said to cause the death of the lion. Having adhered to
that beast’s skin, the irritation produced and the impossibility of getting
it off at last induces the lion to bite it, and once in his mouth he
cannot remove it, and so the animal dies miserably.</p>

<p>Some animals fix themselves much as these seeds of plants do.
Amongst them are the parasites known as tics which fix themselves
with great tenacity by the appendages of their mouths. Other parasites—like
the itch insect<a name="FNanchor_78" id="FNanchor_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a>
and forms allied to it—have hooked processes and
stiff, hard bristles, which are at once very irritating and very adherent.
Creatures are also carried about inside others, as is the case with the
seeds of many plants. These are disseminated by birds which have
swallowed but have not digested such seeds, and in an analogous manner
the great tape-worm group becomes also widely diffused.</p>

<p>Moving subterranean organisms, inasmuch as they must penetrate
through a dense and highly-resisting substance, must evidently either
have forms which offer little resistance—reducing friction to a minimum—or
must be provided with special means of penetrating such substance.
Evidently the least resisting form is presented by a body
much elongated, rounded, and more or less attenuated at the advancing
end, which end has to effect the requisite penetration. This is the
form of the earth-worm—a form which is approximated to by a variety
of creatures which have not the least affinity of nature with it, but
only more or less resemble it as regards its dwelling-place and mode
of locomotion.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span>
Such, for example, are the curious serpents called
<i>Typhlops</i>,<a name="FNanchor_79" id="FNanchor_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a> and such
are the legless lizards<a name="FNanchor_80" id="FNanchor_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a>
(<i>Anguis</i>), and such, again, are the simpler
vermiform animals allied to frogs, called
<i>Cæciliæ</i>.<a name="FNanchor_81" id="FNanchor_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a></p>

<p>In order to burrow quickly and easily by means of processes of the
body, it is evidently a necessary condition that the earth should be
rapidly removed by the powerful action of parts situated towards
the body’s anterior end. The similarity of effect of similar conditions
in creatures which are most widely divergent in nature is exemplified by
the mole and the mole-cricket, which are each provided with a strong
and broadened-out pair of anterior digging-limbs.</p>

<p>Living creatures may be sustained in the air for a longer or shorter
time at one or another stage of their existence. The reproductive
particles of the lowest forms of animals and plants are so excessively
minute that they float in the air with the greatest ease, without
needing any complication of structure—their spheroidal form harmonizing
with the equal action upon them of influences on all sides of
them. Reproductive parts which, though less minute than these, are
still very small, may also be diffused by floating in the atmosphere.
Such are the pollen grains of those trees which are fertilized merely by
the action of the winds, such as the hazel, poplar, birch, and of lowly
plants, as the grasses. It is by the wind that the pollen grains of these
plants are accidentally brought into contact with the appropriate surfaces
for their reception. Conspicuous in the spring of the year are the clouds
of yellow dust, pollen grains, given off by fir trees, which are plants
also wind-fertilized. But here we find a slight complication; for to
facilitate the dispersion of such particles the outer coat of each of their
pollen grains is produced into a short wing-like process on each side,
and these processes help at once to sustain it in the air, and to aid its
propulsion by offering more surface to the force of the aërial currents.</p>

<p>Very much more conspicuous are the wing-like expansions of many
seeds—such, for example, as those of the maple. These expansions serve
to diffuse the seeds which bear them, as do also the delicate cottony
filaments which surround the seeds of a variety of plants of widely
different natures and affinities, as some kinds of spider float through
the air by the aid of the delicate filaments which they send forth to
serve as an aërial float. Familiar to every one is the delicate little
parachute-like structure of radiating filaments on the seeds of such
plants as the dandelion—which seeds most children have at some
time helped to diffuse by blowing.</p>

<p>Aërial progress by actual effort is effected by a limited group of organisms,
and only in certain cases (bats, birds, and insects) does it take
the form of true flight in creatures now existing. In other creatures,
such as so-called flying fishes, squirrels, opossums, and the little flying
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span>
dragon, the more or less prolonged aërial sustentation is effected by
expansions of skin, which act as parachutes in ways be later described
in detail.</p>

<p>True flight seems to need a definite mechanism of one kind—namely,
a mechanism which shall give rapid and reiterated blows to the air
from a point towards the dorsal side, and head end of the body, by
structures of considerable superficial extent, and capable of rapid and
delicate inclinations of surface. Such structures must be light and therefore
delicate, and yet possess very considerable strength to resist the strain
of the body’s prolonged sustentation, and to effect its occasionally very
rapid progress, as in the swift and in dragon-flies. These conditions
which we find fulfilled in all existing flying organisms were also fulfilled
organisms which have for ages passed away from the surface of this by
planet, such as the extinct flying reptiles called <i>Pterosauria</i> or
<i>Pterodactyles</i>.<a name="FNanchor_82" id="FNanchor_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a></p>

<p>In all such rapidly flying creatures the form of the body is necessarily
modified so as to throw the centre of gravity where it may be best sustained.
It is this which packs what are practically a bird’s teeth in its
belly, and thickens so greatly the muscles on its breast which are
formed in such a way as to serve both the usual purposes of breast-muscles,
and also that which is effected in most cases by muscles of the
back, which in birds are very greatly diminished in volume and extent.</p>

<p>But there are living creatures which have relations with two media;
which, though they are aquatic, yet by the help of the air rise and float,
so as to be partly bathed in the atmosphere; while others carry down a
portion of that atmosphere below the surface of water, so as to be sub-aqueously
aërial. Examples of the last-mentioned condition are
afforded by such spiders as have the habit of enclosing a bubble of air
within the meshes of their self-woven network, and going down with it,
being thus able there to maintain themselves as in a diving-bell. The
reverse condition obtains in such plants as
<i>Valisneria</i>,<a name="FNanchor_83" id="FNanchor_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a> which secrete
air within expanded bladder-like receptacles, and, thus aided, rise to the
surface and float. Another example is that of certain polyp animals,
such as the Portuguese man of war, which also rise and swim upon the
surface of the sea by the aid of floats in the form of bladders, which are
also filled with air by means of their own life processes. The same also
is the case in many seaweeds.</p>

<p>Thus, these multitudinous forms of living creatures, both animals
and plants, are reducible to certain categories in harmony with their
modes of life, and the relations existing between them and all surrounding
influences. We may see that, without compliance with certain of such
laws, their existence would be impossible, and we see that there is a general
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span>
correspondence between their shape and structure on the one hand, and
their environment (that is, the totality of all surrounding agencies and
influences) on the other. Are we to consider that such influences are
the <i>causes</i> of their form and structure? Obviously the biological facts
before us, as yet, are insufficient to enable us to give a satisfactory
answer to this question. It will for the present be enough to bear in
mind that by some writers the environment <i>is</i> deemed the one and
sufficient cause of all the characters of living creatures. But as yet we
have not even seen what <i>is</i> the environment. Evidently physical influences—the
earth, sea, or air, light, heat, and motion—do not exhaust
it. One important factor would be omitted if we neglected to note the
share taken in the environment of each living creature by a multitude
of other living creatures which are in various ways related to it. This
question must occupy us later.</p>

<p>But by the forms of living creatures is not meant merely their external
form. Some general notion then should here at starting be obtained
of their internal form—that is, of their essential structure.</p>

<p>The minutest and probably the simplest forms of living creatures
(whether plant or animal) are such as are presented by
<i>Bacteria</i>,<a name="FNanchor_84" id="FNanchor_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a> the
yeast-plant and <i>Protoccus</i>. Bacteria are those minute creatures the
mode of origin of which in sealed infusions has been so much of late
disputed, but the activity of which in promoting the decomposition of
dead substances is undisputed. A <i>bacterium</i> is a particle of protoplasmic
matter, either spheroidal or oblong, or like a short rod, or shaped like a
corkscrew, and bacteria may also be in the form of a short chain of
spheroids, or of oblong particles, or of rods united in a zigzag manner.</p>

<p>Their breadth may vary from the 1/30000 to 1/10000 of an inch. They
may also assume quite another appearance, by surrounding themselves
with a gelatinous envelope, which condition is called their <i>zooglæa</i>
state of existence.</p>

<p>They may be readily obtained by making some hay tea, and keeping it
for a day or two, when they will be found to abound in the scum which
forms on the surface, and to be in active motion. In the corkscrew
form, <i>Spirillum volitans</i>, each end of the body is produced into a minute
hair-like process or <i>cilium</i>, and it is by the lashings of these cilia that the
minute organism moves about.</p>

<p>Other as simple but larger organisms may consist of a minute mass
of semi-fluid protoplasm, containing granules, as we find to be the case
in the plant <i>Vaucheria</i>,<a name="FNanchor_85" id="FNanchor_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a>
and many other <i>Algæ</i>, and in the animal
<i>Amœba primitiva</i>.<a name="FNanchor_86" id="FNanchor_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a></p>

<p>An organism of this simplest kind or a fragment of a higher organism
which presents this simplest condition is called a
cell.<a name="FNanchor_87" id="FNanchor_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a> Very generally
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span>
such cell has within it a more or less distinctly marked generally denser
and spheroidal body called a <i>nucleus</i>, within which, again, other minute
spots may appear called <i>nucleoli</i>.</p>

<p>Even in this simplest of all possible conditions of life a slight difference
appears between its most external film and its inner substance—just as
a cup of broth left to stand will form for itself a filmy outermost layer.
This incipient difference between what is inner and what is outer is one
which is constantly maintained in all higher organisms, as we shall soon
see abundantly. But the distinction into outer and inner is, as has been
said, shown in a much more marked way in the constituent units, or
<i>cells</i>, which build up the bodies of plants generally; for these consist of
an inner part of protoplasm, enclosed in a distinct external cellulose
envelope or <i>cell-wall</i>. As has also been shown, many of the lowest animals
take on occasionally the <i>encysted</i> condition when they also consist of a
particle of bioplasm enclosed in a distinct cell-wall or <i>cyst</i>, though one
not made of cellulose.</p>

<p>The protoplasmic contents of the cell may attract watery fluid thus
forming clearer spaces or <i>vacuoles</i> within it, and these may become so extended
that the protoplasm may be reduced to a thin layer lining the cell
wall, thread-like processes or remnants of protoplasm often passing across
the cell from one part of the protoplasmic lining to another. A cell,
almost always a nucleated cell, is the original form of every living
creature without exception; and a great number of small, and some
considerably sized living beings, never get beyond this unicellular
condition, however much their cell may become enlarged or complicated
in shape. Such creatures form the lowest of all animals and plants;
but the overwhelming majority of living creatures are formed of
aggregations of cells which cohere and fuse together in various ways.
As an example of a unicellular and typically cellular living creature we
may take the yeast plant (<i>Saccharomyces cerevisiæ</i>), which consists of a
particle of bioplasm enclosed in a cell-wall of cellulose, the whole being
globular or oval in shape, and generally about 1/3000 of an inch in
diameter. Within its bioplasm a clear space or vacuole may often be
distinguished. Often these organisms appear with a more complicated
outline, due to the growth of new saccharomycetes from its outer wall,
and the budding forth of others again from the side of such protruding
processes, all of which ultimately become detached as independent
saccharomycetes, though they often continue adherent for a long time,
forming strings or other temporary aggregations of such organisms.</p>

<p>In <i>Protococcus</i> we meet with one of the lowest order. Its colour is
green, which, as in all other higher plants also, is due to the presence in its
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span>
protoplasm of a colouring matter called <i>chlorophyll</i>, either diffused
or aggregated in certain denser granules of protoplasmic substance.
Protococcus may be smaller or much larger than the yeast plant, it is
spheroidal, and its protoplasm is enclosed in a tough case of cellulose,
which, however, it may not nearly fill, while the long cilia may protrude
through it and propel the whole organism by their reiterated
lashings.</p>

<p>It has been already said that a vegetable may temporarily exist as a
particle of bioplasm without any cell-wall, and such is the case with
<i>Protococcus</i>, the cellular envelope of which occasionally disappears.
More remarkable still is the form already referred to under the name
<i>Myxomycetes</i>,<a name="FNanchor_88" id="FNanchor_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a>
which, for part of its existence, is the form of an indefinitely-shaped,
naked protoplasmic mass.<a name="FNanchor_89" id="FNanchor_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a></p>

<p>Living creatures which consist of a single cell may present, nevertheless,
a considerable complication of structure. Thus, an organism as
simple as the <i>amœba primitiva</i>, before noticed, may have the power of
forming, or, as it is technically called, <i>secreting</i>, from its own substance
and its surrounding medium a most complex supporting skeleton of
calcareous or silicious nature. It may have its outer envelope so
markedly differentiated from its inner as to require a distinct designation
as <i>exosarc</i>, while it may give rise in its interior not only to a nucleus
and nucleolus, but to two regularly formed cavities with the power of
rythmical pulsation, and one definite portion of its external wall may
be perforated to form a permanent mouth instead of as in such forms
as <i>Amœba</i>, any part serving indifferently as a mouth and every portion
having similar functions without differentiation. All these and other
complications of structure may arise by direct growth and transubstantiation
of the single cell into the various physically and
chemically different parts.</p>

<p>Again, a living creature which is fixed may so extend itself as to
simulate stem, roots, and branches, and yet remain essentially simple,
consisting merely of one greatly enlarged and complicated cell.</p>

<p>Thus, a unicellular plant may take on a great complexity of form
while still remaining purely unicellular. It may assume the form of
a stem with roots and leaves. An example of such we may see in the
genus <i>Caulerpa</i>,<a name="FNanchor_90" id="FNanchor_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a>
which, although unicellular, simulates in its outline the
fern called <i>Blechnum</i>.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span>
The next grade of structural complication in living creatures is
produced by the lowly plants, such as <i>Protococcus</i>, which multiply by
spontaneous self-division or <i>fission</i>. This process may take place
repeatedly and at the same time incompletely, in this way producing an
apparently compound organism. Thus, we have the second grade of
structural complication in living creatures—namely, the aggregation of
cells into a loosely joined mass.</p>

<p>Other simple forms are those presented by the minute organisms
Diatoms and Desmids, the former enclosed in silicious cases, and some
presenting the only exception to the general law that organic bodies
are bounded by curved lines and surfaces.</p>

<p>Wonderful is the minute ornamentation presented by the surfaces of
these microscopic plants. Some of them cohere by imperfect division
in the second grade of structural complication just described; they may
form longitudinal series of cells, or they may be arranged round a
common centre.</p>

<p>One of the best examples of this secondary grade of complication is
presented by the spherically aggregated cells of
<i>Volvox</i>.<a name="FNanchor_91" id="FNanchor_91"></a><a href="#Footnote_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a> These
present us with a good example of the way in which the shape of
the individual cells may spontaneously alter, to suit the mode of their
aggregation. Originally spherical, the adjacent sides of these cells
become flattened, and thus the cells acquire a polygonal figure.</p>

<p>Other instances of the coherence of the cells of unicellular organisms
into indefinite and inconstant aggregations is presented by some radiolarians,
individuals which cohere into what are called <i>colonies</i>.</p>

<p>From such incomplete aggregation, the next step is to definite and stable
aggregations, in which the life of the constituent parts is more or less
plainly subservient to, and dominated by, the life of the whole. Such
we find in all but the
lowest <i>Fungi</i>,<a name="FNanchor_92" id="FNanchor_92"></a><a href="#Footnote_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a>
and <i>Algæ</i>, in sponges,<a name="FNanchor_93" id="FNanchor_93"></a><a href="#Footnote_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a>
and <i>Hydræ</i>, and also in all higher organisms. In such permanent aggregations,
the dominant life of the whole is shown partly in greater constancy of
external form and partly in the setting apart of separate portions of
the whole, either for the nourishment of the entire creature or for the
reproduction of fresh individuals, or for effecting gaseous interchange, or
(in animals) for ministering to feeling and locomotion.</p>

<p>Thus, the overwhelming majority of living creatures are, as has been
said, formed of aggregation of cells, which cohere or fuse together in
various ways—and not only of aggregation of cells but of aggregation
of aggregations of cells or “tissues.” Each tissue is a structure formed
by the aggregation, or by aggregation and metamorphoses, of certain
sets of cells. Thus, every higher plant or animal is made of an inconceivable
multitude of cells, together with tissues which are not cellular,
but which have originated by metamorphosis of cells, and every such
higher plant or animal at first consists entirely of an aggregate of plainly
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span>
distinct cells; and, first of all, of one single cell only, whence its whole
structure, however complex, has originally sprung, though generally not
until it has had at least a portion of another cell mixed with it.</p>

<p>This transformation of cells, at first all alike, into distinct orders of
cells or <i>tissues</i>, whence different organs with different functions arise, is
characteristic of all living creatures above those which each consist
throughout life of one cell only.</p>

<p>We have seen that unicellular organisms may unite into a cylindrical
or spheroidal colony, as in some <i>Radiolaria</i>, or into a spheroid of closely-adjusted
cells, forming one layer, as in <i>Volvox</i>. But however large or
complex such aggregation may be, it never forms sets of united cells or
tissues. The whole of these lower creatures, therefore, may be spoken of
as unicellular organisms; as though they may consist of many cells,
those cells retain their individuality. Such creatures are all the lowest
animals—those called
<i>Hypozoa</i><a name="FNanchor_94" id="FNanchor_94"></a><a href="#Footnote_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a>
or <i>Protozoa</i>, and also the lowest
cryptogamic<a name="FNanchor_95" id="FNanchor_95"></a><a href="#Footnote_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a>
plants.</p>

<p>All other animals and all the higher plants are multicellular. The
description of one animal (which is placed as it were on the boundary
between the multicellular and the unicellular division), the little
parasitic worm <i>Dicyema</i>,<a name="FNanchor_96" id="FNanchor_96"></a><a href="#Footnote_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a>
must for the present be postponed, as its
significance could not yet be understood.</p>

<p>Before leaving the consideration of the forms of living creatures, a
further distinction should be made clear—that is to say, a distinction
in the nature of resemblances which may exist between various parts.</p>

<p>There are two different relations which may exist between a part or
organ in one animal or plant, and another part or organ in another
animal or plant. One of these relations is called <i>analogy</i> and the other
<i>homology</i>, and it is very desirable to bear clearly in mind the distinction
which exists between these two relations.</p>

<p><i>Analogy</i> refers to the use to which any part or organ is put—that is, it
refers to its function.</p>

<p>Thus, the flower of the daisy is, as we shall see, analogous to that
of the buttercup. The spathe of an arum is analogous to the corolla of
the dead nettle (for both serve to shelter the essential parts of the
flower).</p>

<p>The foot of a horse is analogous to the foot of a man, and the shell
of a tortoise to the shell of an armadillo; for the two former serve for
support and locomotion, while the latter two are solid protecting
envelopes to the body. So also the flying organ or wing of a bat is
analogous to the flying organ or wing of a beetle.</p>

<p><i>Homology</i> refers to essential similarity in position compared with all
the other parts or organs of the body, and must be considered apart
from function.</p>

<p>Thus, as we shall see in the next Essay a single floret of the daisy is
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span>
homologous with the whole flower of the buttercup. The spathe of an
arum is the homologue of any
bract,<a name="FNanchor_97" id="FNanchor_97"></a><a href="#Footnote_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a>
however insignificant in size and
apparently devoid of function. The foot of a horse is homologous (as
we shall see later) to the middle toe only of man, while the shell of the
tortoise is in part homologous with the shell of the armadillo and in
part with the ribs of the latter animal.</p>

<p>There is no relation of homology, however remote, between the wings
of a bat and of a beetle, and these two animals (as will shortly
appear) have the parts and organs of their bodies so fundamentally
different, that it is doubtful whether any definite relations of homology
can be established between them.</p>

<p>A special term has been devoted to signify a resemblance between
two parts in two different animals and plants, which resemblance has
been induced by or is directly related to their common needs, and the
similarity of external influences. This term is “homoplasy,” and
structures which may thus be supposed to have grown alike in obedience
to the influence of similar external causes acting on similar innate
powers have been called <i>Homoplasts</i>.</p>

<p>Such, then, are the more general conditions as to structure and figure
which living creatures present, and (as has been said) with great differences
as to the amount of possible variation, most kinds have a definite limit
as to size. It remains only to make general observations on the
colours of living creatures.</p>

<p>But a few years ago, hardly any few general remarks of really scientific
interest and value could have been made respecting the varied hues
and markings which organisms present. No rational relation was even
suspected to exist between the colours of plants and the busy insect
life which swarms about their blossoms or about the varied colours of
birds, and the details of their habits and modes of existence.</p>

<p>It was known, of course, that Arctic foxes and hares became white in
winter, and that each benefited by its change, and suffered from the
change of the other; the snow tint which enabled the hare to escape
also facilitating the unobserved approach of the fox. It was also known
that many desert animals were of the colour of the sandy plain they
wandered over, and that tree-snakes and tree-frogs were often green.
But it seemed incredible that the varied shades or bright adornments of
the living world should each and all be governed by rigid laws, generally
connected with the welfare of the organisms so furnished. Here, if
anywhere, the reign of utilitarianism in Nature appeared to be at an
end, and creative fancy to have full play, regardless but of the harmony
and beauty thus revealed to appreciating eyes. The labours and fruitful
thoughts of Bates and Wallace have, however, opened up a wide field for
most interesting inquiry. They have made it evident that in many
instances the most direct utility accompanies colour both in animals and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span>
plants. The colours of flowers serve to attract insects and birds, by the
visits of which they are fertilized or their fertility is greatly augmented.
It is this relation between attractiveness and insect fertilization
which explains the absence of colour from the flowers of plants
which are fertilized only by the wind, such as the fir trees before-mentioned,
oaks, beeches, nettles, sedges, and many others. It also explains
the conspicuousness of the flowers of many oceanic islands, such as those
of the Galapagos archipelago. But it also explains, as Mr. Wallace has
pointed out, the remarkable beauty of Alpine flowers, by their need of
attracting insects from a distance, the conspicuous patches of bright colour
serving thus to attract wandering butterflies upwards from the valleys.</p>

<p>But more remarkable still is the explanation given to the semblance
borne by the colours of some creatures to those of others of quite a
different kind, as of some moths to bees, and some harmless flies to
wasps. For now it is clear that by this mimicry they escape the attacks
of many enemies, who avoid such apparently dangerous forms. On the
other hand, the bright liveries of such offensive creatures are highly useful
to the wearers, for such tints act as a warning to enemies, and so save them
from their being pounced on by creatures which might fatally wound them,
though unable to swallow them. But the beautiful liveries of such
powerful predatory kinds as tigers and leopards do not serve as warnings.
They serve their wearers, however, none the less, though it is by aiding
their concealment, and so allowing their prey to approach them unsuspectingly
to fatal nearness. For the vertical stripes of the tiger resemble the
vertical shadows of the grasses of the jungle amongst which it lurks, as
the scattered spots of the leopard agree with the scattered spots of
shadow amongst the foliage of trees on the boughs of which it lies in
wait. But to say more on this head would be to anticipate remarks to
come, when the relations of living beings to one another are under consideration,
and the subject is too extensive to be here treated in full.
Moreover, it must be noted that such relations do not by any means
serve to explain all the phenomena of organic colour. Direct action is
in some curious way exerted upon many organisms, by surrounding tints,
and similarly different geographical districts and varieties of locality
affect directly the colour of both animals and plants, but these questions
will be fully treated of under the head of the relations of animals to the
physical world. Suffice it here to note that the phenomena of colour no
less than the phenomena of form are in harmony with (whether or not
the result of) the active agencies of all environing conditions. But colour
of some kind is a universal attribute of all material things. Though
apparently most irregularly distributed through the world of life, yet
order underlies the seeming confusion. Of certain large groups certain
tints are characteristic, as has already been remarked with respect to the
great order to which the dandelion belongs. But the same remark may
be made of various others, as, for example, of the order <i>Cruciferæ</i> (to which
the wallflower and turnip belong), the flowers of which are generally
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span>
white, pink, or yellow, while the gentians, again, are noteworthy for
exhibiting pure colours.</p>

<p>But the colours which predominate in the whole mass of living
creatures of all kinds are tints of green, brown, or reddish-yellow.
Bright colours, such as blue, scarlet, crimson, gold, or silver are
exceptional, and the colour blue is especially rare. The borrowed
radiance of the inorganic world, in the form of metallic brightness,
is especially a characteristic of those living gems, the humming birds; but
not a few other animals also exhibit it. Thus, of birds more or less gifted
with metallic radiance, though in a less degree than humming birds, may
be mentioned the sunbirds, the trogons, and the beautiful family of
pheasants; and many insects and many fishes shine with metallic tints.</p>

<p>Brightness of this kind (though the leaves of a few plants have a
coppery lustre) is unknown in the world of plants, in which shades of
green are overwhelmingly predominant, and are universally present,
except in a few exceptional forms, notably the
fungi.<a name="FNanchor_98" id="FNanchor_98"></a><a href="#Footnote_98" class="fnanchor">[98]</a></p>

<p>Various aquatic animals belonging to very different groups agree
in possessing a perfectly glass-like transparency. Amongst them
are fish which live in the ocean; for example, the
Teleostean<a name="FNanchor_99" id="FNanchor_99"></a><a href="#Footnote_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a> fish
(<i>Leptocephalus</i>), also mollusca of all kinds, including even perfectly
transparent cuttle fishes.<a name="FNanchor_100" id="FNanchor_100"></a><a href="#Footnote_100" class="fnanchor">[100]</a>
There are also glass-like
crustaceans,<a name="FNanchor_101" id="FNanchor_101"></a><a href="#Footnote_101" class="fnanchor">[101]</a> and
also planarians<a name="FNanchor_102" id="FNanchor_102"></a><a href="#Footnote_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a>
and sea anemones.<a name="FNanchor_103" id="FNanchor_103"></a><a href="#Footnote_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a>
Plants, however, never present
this character, although by it they might, as well as animals, escape
being preyed upon.</p>

<p>Most fishes which inhabit the deep sea are of a dull black colour,
though some are white, and the majority of all deep-sea animals, considered
as a whole, are more or less decidedly coloured, many brightly
so.<a name="FNanchor_104" id="FNanchor_104"></a><a href="#Footnote_104" class="fnanchor">[104]</a></p>

<p>Luminosity is a character of many lowly animals, and it is the
presence of minute creatures possessing this character which so often
causes the spray dashed from the prow of an advancing ship to appear
like a shower of sparks, while glowing bodies traverse the water
beneath its surface. Many insects, such as fire-flies and glow-worms,
are notoriously luminous. In the vegetable world, however, this
character is very rarely present, being only so in certain fungi,
some of which exhibit a wonderful luminosity. Humboldt relates that
he found this to be especially splendid in mines.</p>

<p>As like phenomena of colour characterize certain groups of living
creatures, so also like phenomena of colour may characterize certain
geographical regions being common to creatures of very different kinds
which inhabit such regions, as we shall hereafter see. The brightest of
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span>
living things, the humming birds, have their true home in the equatorial
region of America, to which continent they are exclusively
confined. But it is in the equatorial region of the whole earth that
we find the most brilliant birds of other kinds, the most brightly
coloured reptiles and fishes, the largest and many of the loveliest
butterflies, moths and beetles, the most beautiful orchids, the largest
of all flowers and of all clusters of flowers.</p>

<p>But neither the temperate, nor even the Arctic nor Antarctic climes
are denied the glory of bright tints in the long days of their brief, but
sometimes fervid, summer. Indeed, the golden burst of gorse and glow
of heather in our temperate zone have, in their way, an unequal charm;
while every here and there Arctic lands and Alpine heights exhibit
beauties of colour which are hardly elsewhere presented by the field of
animated nature to the eye of man.</p>

<p class="author"><span class="smcap">St. George Mivart.</span></p>

<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56" id="Footnote_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a>
<span class="smcap">Contemporary Review</span> for July, 1879, p. 678.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57" id="Footnote_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a>
Loc. cit., p. 704.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58" id="Footnote_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a>
<span class="smcap">Contemporary Review</span> for July, 1879, p. 703.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59" id="Footnote_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a>
<i>Ibid.</i> for September, 1879, p. 27.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60" id="Footnote_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a>
<span class="smcap">Contemporary Review</span>, September, 1879, pp. 33 and 43.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61" id="Footnote_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a>
One of the <i>Melanospermeæ</i>; <i>Ibid.</i> p. 36.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62" id="Footnote_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a>
Creatures belonging to the class <i>Lammellibranchiata</i>; see <span class="smcap">Contemporary Review</span>,
September, 1879, pp. 30 and 43.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63" id="Footnote_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a>
The truffle may be generally regarded rather as the fruit of a plant than as an entire
plant, and yet in some of the group the rest of the plant (which is called the <i>Mycelium</i>) is
quite rudimentary, or even absent.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64" id="Footnote_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a>
There are climbers in Brazil, the roots of which, descending around the trunk of the
tree supporting them, clasp the latter with such a deadly embrace that it dies and decays.
In the meantime, the descending roots (having become fixed in the ground) swell and meet
so as to form a new and irregularly-shaped trunk of solid wood, which has thus (by an
inverted process) grown downwards instead of upwards. There are other such creepers
in the East which have a wide-spreading downward growth (see Wallace’s “Malay
Archipelago,” vol. i. p. 131).</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65" id="Footnote_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a>
Creatures belonging to the group <i>Rhizopoda</i>; see <span class="smcap">Contemporary Review</span> for September,
1879, pp. 35 and 43.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66" id="Footnote_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a>
One of the lowest of the <i>Rhizopoda</i>; <i>Ibid.</i> p. 36.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67" id="Footnote_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a>
A class of <i>Hypozoa</i>; see <span class="smcap">Contemporary Review</span> for September, 1879, pp. 35 and 43.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68" id="Footnote_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a>
<i>Ibid.</i> pp. 31 and 43.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69" id="Footnote_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a>
<i>Ibid.</i> p. 35, and <i>Archiv für Mikroskop. Anatomie</i>, vol. xv. Heft 3, plate xx.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70" id="Footnote_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a>
See <span class="smcap">Contemporary Review</span>, September, 1879, p. 31.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71" id="Footnote_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a>
One of the <i>Copepoda</i>; see loc. cit., p. 31.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_72" id="Footnote_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a>
See loc. cit., p. 31.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_73" id="Footnote_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a>
Of the class <i>Cestoidea</i>; see loc. cit., pp. 34 and 43.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_74" id="Footnote_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a>
Loc. cit., p. 36.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_75" id="Footnote_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a>
Loc. cit., p. 37.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_76" id="Footnote_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76"><span class="label">[76]</span></a>
Loc. cit., p. 36.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_77" id="Footnote_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a>
All these three plants belong to the <i>Dicotyledonous</i> order <i>Sesameæ</i>, which would come
between the <i>Lobiatæ</i> and the <i>Orobanchaceæ</i> of the list given on p. 42 in the <span class="smcap">Contemporary
Review</span> for September, 1879. This order contains the <i>Sesamum orientale</i>, the seeds of
which yield sesamum or gingilie oil, principally used in the manufacture of soap. 58,940
tons of these seeds were imported into France in 1855.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_78" id="Footnote_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a>
This and the tics belong to the class <i>Arachnida</i>; see <span class="smcap">Contemporary Review</span>,
September, 1879, pp. 32 and 43.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_79" id="Footnote_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79"><span class="label">[79]</span></a>
For the <i>Typhlopsidæ</i>, see <span class="smcap">Contemporary Review</span>, September, 1879, p. 26.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_80" id="Footnote_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80"><span class="label">[80]</span></a>
Loc. cit., p. 24.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_81" id="Footnote_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81"><span class="label">[81]</span></a>
Belonging to the class <i>Ophiomorpha</i>; see loc. cit., pp. 27 and 43.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_82" id="Footnote_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_82"><span class="label">[82]</span></a>
See <span class="smcap">Contemporary Review</span>, September, 1879, p. 25.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_83" id="Footnote_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_83"><span class="label">[83]</span></a>
<i>Valisneria spiralis</i>: these are distinct male and female flowers. The male flowers are
on short stalks, which break and allow their flowers to rise to the surface and there float, scattering
their pollen. The female flowers grow on long coiled stalks, which uncoil and allow
them to rise to the surface to be fertilized, after which the stalks recoil and withdraw them
again below. This is a monocotyledonous plant of the order <i>Hydrocharideæ</i>.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_84" id="Footnote_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_84"><span class="label">[84]</span></a>
See <span class="smcap">Contemporary Review</span>, September, 1879, p. 37.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_85" id="Footnote_85"></a><a href="#FNanchor_85"><span class="label">[85]</span></a>
Loc. cit., p. 37.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_86" id="Footnote_86"></a><a href="#FNanchor_86"><span class="label">[86]</span></a>
Loc. cit., p. 36.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_87" id="Footnote_87"></a><a href="#FNanchor_87"><span class="label">[87]</span></a>
There is an ambiguity in the use of the word “cell.” By some writers it is only used
to denote a particle of protoplasm with a nucleus (whether or not it is enclosed in a “cell-wall”),
while such a particle without a nucleus is called by them a <i>Cytod</i>. By others it is
used to denote any particle of protoplasm enclosed in a cell-wall, and by others, again, as
denoting any distinct particle of protoplasm with or without a nucleus, and with or without a
cell-wall. It is in this widest sense that it is here proposed to use the term “cell,” distinguishing,
where needful, those with a nucleus or envelope as “a nucleated” or “a walled”
cell.</p>

<p>As yet the two natures and functions of the nucleus and nucleolus are by no means cleared
up. The nucleus often appears to contain a complexity of fibrils, transitory aggregations
of which have been supposed to cause the appearance of nucleoli. The apparently simplest
protoplasm is probably of really very complex, most minute structure.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_88" id="Footnote_88"></a><a href="#FNanchor_88"><span class="label">[88]</span></a>
<span class="smcap">Contemporary Review</span>, September, 1879, p. 37.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_89" id="Footnote_89"></a><a href="#FNanchor_89"><span class="label">[89]</span></a>
Here reference may be made to the name <i>Bathybius</i>, which was given by Professor
Huxley to a material found at the sea bottom, of great extent and indefinite shape, and
which was supposed by him to be the remains of a mass of once living protoplasm, but
which there is much reason now to suppose was really but inorganic material. Reference
is here made to this, because some persons seem to imagine that if <i>Bathybius</i> were a lowly
animal some important speculative consequences would follow. But this is an utter mistake.
It is generally admitted already that there are living structureless protoplasmic organisms of
no definite shape, and of which detached particles can live and grow. It would make no
real difference whatever to the known facts of life if a creature of the kind should be found
as large as the Pacific Ocean, with its portions exceptionally detachable and its shape
irregular in the extreme.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_90" id="Footnote_90"></a><a href="#FNanchor_90"><span class="label">[90]</span></a>
<span class="smcap">Contemporary Review</span>, September, 1879, p. 37.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_91" id="Footnote_91"></a><a href="#FNanchor_91"><span class="label">[91]</span></a>
<span class="smcap">Contemporary Review</span>, September, 1879, p. 36.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_92" id="Footnote_92"></a><a href="#FNanchor_92"><span class="label">[92]</span></a>
Loc. cit., pp. 37 and 43.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_93" id="Footnote_93"></a><a href="#FNanchor_93"><span class="label">[93]</span></a>
Loc. cit., p. 34.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_94" id="Footnote_94"></a><a href="#FNanchor_94"><span class="label">[94]</span></a>
<span class="smcap">Contemporary Review</span>, September, 1879, pp. 35 and 43.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_95" id="Footnote_95"></a><a href="#FNanchor_95"><span class="label">[95]</span></a>
For explanation of this application of this term see loc. cit., p. 38.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_96" id="Footnote_96"></a><a href="#FNanchor_96"><span class="label">[96]</span></a>
Loc. cit., p. 35.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_97" id="Footnote_97"></a><a href="#FNanchor_97"><span class="label">[97]</span></a>
A kind of leaf the nature of which as well as of spathes, florets, and flowers, will be
explained in the next Essay.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_98" id="Footnote_98"></a><a href="#FNanchor_98"><span class="label">[98]</span></a>
<span class="smcap">Contemporary Review</span>, loc. cit., pp. 37 and 43.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_99" id="Footnote_99"></a><a href="#FNanchor_99"><span class="label">[99]</span></a>
Teleostean fishes are generally bony, but the bones are represented by cartilages in
<i>Leptocephalus</i>. As to teleosteans, see <span class="smcap">Contemporary Review</span>, September, 1879, p. 27.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_100" id="Footnote_100"></a><a href="#FNanchor_100"><span class="label">[100]</span></a>
<i>Ibid.</i>, loc. cit., p. 30.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_101" id="Footnote_101"></a><a href="#FNanchor_101"><span class="label">[101]</span></a>
<i>Ibid.</i>, loc. cit., pp. 31 and 43.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_102" id="Footnote_102"></a><a href="#FNanchor_102"><span class="label">[102]</span></a>
<i>Ibid.</i>, loc. cit., pp. 33 and 43.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_103" id="Footnote_103"></a><a href="#FNanchor_103"><span class="label">[103]</span></a>
<i>Ibid.</i>, loc. cit., p. 34. As examples of transparent sea anemones, Nautactis and its
allies, belonging to the <i>Actinozoa</i>, may be mentioned.</p></div>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_104" id="Footnote_104"></a><a href="#FNanchor_104"><span class="label">[104]</span></a>
See Moseley’s “Challenger,” p. 592.</p></div>
</div>

<hr />

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span></p>

<h2>CONTEMPORARY LIFE AND THOUGHT IN TURKEY.</h2>

<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Constantinople</span>, <i>Sept. 9th, 1879</i>.</p>

<p>Three months have elapsed since my last letter, and were it not
for the suffering people we might treat of the history of the
Turkish Government during these months as so many acts in a comedy;
but human suffering is never ridiculous, and those who live in the
midst of it find nothing amusing in the obstinate stupidity which
causes it. It is not pleasant to live among the ruins of a crumbling
Empire, however picturesque these ruins may appear at a distance, and
however much it may be for the interest of foreign politicians to leave
them undisturbed. Whatever may be the course of contemporary
thought in England, where the fate of Turkey has unfortunately
become a party question, the people of Turkey can only think of it as
it affects their own interests, and they desire above all things that the
people of England, without distinction of party, should understand their
condition as it is. This is a reasonable desire, whether anything can be
done for them or not; and these letters are intended to represent contemporary
life and thought <i>in Turkey</i>.</p>

<h4>The Fall of Khaireddin Pacha.</h4>

<p>Khaireddin Pacha commenced life as a Circassian slave in Tunis.
He came to Constantinople last year as an exiled Prime Minister of the
Bey, but possessed of immense wealth which he had accumulated while
in office, and with a high reputation for learning, skill as an administrator,
and devotion to the faith of Islam. He was well received by the
Sultan, who often consulted him in regard to political affairs; and finally,
through the influence of France and England, he was appointed Grand
Vizier. But he made no friends among the Turkish Pachas, and had
no party in the country. Even the most liberal of the governing class
regarded him as an interloper, who had neither the ability nor the experience
necessary to fit him for the place which he had secured by
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span>
European influence. He reciprocated their distrust, and spoke of them
freely as a band of bandits. He was too good a Mussulman to
attempt to build up a party among the Christians. He depended
simply upon his personal influence over the Sultan and the support of
the French and English Ambassadors. He succeeded in exiling all the
ex-Grand Viziers, but he had still more dangerous enemies among his
own colleagues, who thwarted him at every step, worked upon the fears
of the Sultan, and brought the affairs of the Government to a dead-lock.
He finally proposed to the Sultan a plan of Government which, under
the name of reform, involved an abdication of his supreme power in
favour of the Grand Vizier. This was supported by all the influence of
France, England, and Austria, but opposed by the Ulema and almost
the whole governing class. It led to a formal decision on the part of
the Ulema, which is of far greater importance than the fall of the Grand
Vizier which was the first result of it. It declared that the Sultan
ruled the Empire as Caliph, that he was bound by the Sheriat or sacred
law, and that he could not delegate his authority to another. Under
this decision there can be no such thing as civil government in Turkey.
Civil law can never take the place of the Sheriat, and the emancipation
of the Christian subjects of the Porte is an impossibility. The Ulema
admit the necessity of administrative reform, and recognize the fact that
the Empire is in peril; but it must be a return to ancient customs, and
not a recognition of the principles of European civilization. They are
in favour of limiting the power of the Sultan, but it must be limited by
an extension of the influence of the Ulema. This triumph of the
Ulema is the one important feature of the Ministerial crisis. As
Khaireddin had no party, there are few who regret his fall. As few had
any faith in the influence of English moral suasion applied to the
Sultan by Sir A. H. Layard, there are few who are disappointed at its
failure; but it may be well to note that Sir A. H. Layard and
Khaireddin Pacha have both attempted to control the Turkish Government
by their personal influence over the Sultan, and have both been
defeated by the stronger influence of palace intrigue. There are no
doubt certain advantages in maintaining intimate personal relations
with an absolute sovereign, but, in fact, no sovereign is so absolute that
he cannot be to a great extent controlled by his Ministers; and the
Ambassador who is intimate with the Sultan, and seeks to control his
actions, is certain to excite the jealousy and opposition of the Ministers
and the palace. Even with the Sultan himself, he is obliged to assume
a very different tone from that which he would use in dealing with a
Minister. He may smile, but he cannot frown—he may suggest, but he
cannot threaten—he may persuade, but he cannot dictate—he may
secure a promise, but he cannot exact its fulfilment. In the present case
he has certainly failed to keep his own <i>protégé</i> in office, and, what is
more important, he has failed to secure any modifications in the system
of government.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span></p>

<p>The Ulema who have triumphed in this conflict are the most powerful,
compact, and thoroughly organized body in Turkey. They represent
all the wealthy and influential Turkish families. They monopolize the
two great departments of law and religion, and the revenues of the
higher orders of the hierarchy are immense. Those who are not
fanatics by nature or conviction are so by profession, and their idea of
reform is a return to the good old days of the Caliph of Bagdad. The
Sultan is afraid of them, and he has reason to be so. When the crisis
came it was much easier and safer for him to yield to them than to
follow the counsels of Sir A. H. Layard, or to abdicate in favour of
Khaireddin Pacha. He could invite the former to dinner oftener than
ever, and give the latter a pension. He had nothing to fear from
either.</p>

<p>The office of Grand Vizier was abolished for the second time
within two years, and a Prime Minister appointed who could be trusted
to do nothing; and it is a curious fact that this office is now abolished
for the sake of increasing the power of the Sultan, while it was given
up two years ago for the purpose of limiting his authority and strengthening
that of the Ministry. It was Achmet Vefik Pacha, the most
determined and independent man in Turkey, who was then appointed
Prime Minister. It is Arifi Pacha, a man who never had an idea of
his own, who is now selected to fill the place; while men of strong
will and reactionary proclivities like Osman Pacha and Said Pacha
continue to hold their places as Ministers of War and Justice.</p>

<h4>Sultan Murad.</h4>

<p>It must not be supposed that all the Turks are satisfied with this
triumph of the Ulema, and the rule of Osman Pacha. Those who are
out of office are, of course, dissatisfied. But beyond this there is a
strong party at Constantinople which favours a radical change in the
Government as the only hope of saving the Empire from destruction.
They would limit the power of the Sultan by a genuine Constitution,
and a Representative Assembly; but they believe that this can never be
accomplished under the present Sultan. The fate of Mithad Pacha is
always before their eyes. Their plan is to dethrone Hamid and reinstate
Murad, whose liberal views are well known, and whose health is such
that he could not resist radical measures even if he did not favour them.
I have no means of knowing the real strength of this party, or exactly
who are its leaders, nor do I know anything more of the health of
Sultan Murad than the fact that his partisans declare that he is quite
as sane and strong as his brother. But there is such a party, and it is
confident of ultimate success. Of course, it is not supported by the
British Ambassador, as Mithad Pacha was in the overthrow of Sultan
Abd-ul-Aziz; but it may have other foreign influence behind it, and it
would, no doubt, result in the immediate recall of Mithad Pacha to the
capital. As I am constitutionally a Conservative and opposed to
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span>
revolution, I have not much sympathy with this movement; but I have
no doubt that, if Turkey is to be left to herself to work out her own
destiny, there is more to be hoped from a Representative Assembly than
from any other possible modification of the Government. Mithad
Pacha’s Parliament was a surprise to the world, and not least to those
who devised it. His Constitution was a fraud designed to deceive
Europe. The members of his Assembly were selected by the Government,
its acts were ignored. It was finally disbanded, and many of
its members were imprisoned. But in spite of all this it demonstrated
the fact that there was material in Turkey for an independent
Assembly, which would be qualified by a little experience to control the
Government, and would favour radical reforms in the administration.
The governing class at Constantinople is hopelessly corrupt and effete,
but men came up to this Assembly from the interior, who might in time
have supplanted the present rulers, and infused new life into the
administration. Those who now favour an Independent Parliament
believe that the present Sultan will never consent to it, and therefore
propose to reinstate Murad; but it is possible that if English moral
suasion were turned in this direction, it might meet with more success
than it has obtained thus far. The Ulema would probably oppose it,
although they accepted it as part of the plan of Mithad Pacha.
Circumstances have changed, and their experience of the last Assembly
was not satisfactory.</p>

<p>There is no reason to suppose that Sultan Murad himself has any
part in this plan, or any knowledge of it. He is kept a close prisoner,
and guarded from all outside influences with the greatest care, but his
name is powerful, for his misfortunes and the well-known amiability of
his character have roused the sympathy of the common people in his
behalf. They are inclined to regard him as their rightful sovereign,
and to believe that he might save them from their present misery.
They may be mistaken, but all the world sympathizes with their kindly
feeling towards this unhappy prince, whose mind gave way under the
burden of responsibility which was suddenly forced upon him, and the
shock which he experienced at the death of his uncle and his Ministers,
who was himself deposed before he had regained his faculties, and who,
for no fault of his own, is doomed to spend his life as a prisoner of
State.</p>

<h4>The Progress of Reform.</h4>

<p>We are officially assured that the change in the Ministry will in no
way impede the progress of reform, which has already been carried out
in the Department of Justice, and which is soon to be applied to the
civil administration. The plan has already been elaborated. It has
been sent to the Valis for their approval, and will soon be submitted to
the Eastern Roumelia Commission, after which it will be considered by
the Sultan and, if approved by him, will be proclaimed in the form of a
new <i>Hatt</i>. It professes to be a plan for a reorganization of the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span>
Vilayets, on the principle of decentralization and local self-government.
It does not seem to excite much interest in any quarter, probably for
the reason that all this exists already <i>on paper</i>, and that if Aali Pacha
could not execute the elaborate scheme, which he proclaimed when the
Vilayets were organized, there is not much probability that the new
<i>Hatt</i> will be any more effective. The people of Turkey have no faith
in paper reforms. They are issued as easily as paper money, and are
as easily repudiated; they are like leading articles in the daily papers—they
are written, read, and forgotten, alike by the author and the reader,
within the twenty-four hours. There is an old proverb current among
the Turks which says, “The decrees of the Sultan last three days—the
day they are made, the day they are kept, and the day they are forgotten.”
If the proverb were a new one, the second day would be omitted.</p>

<p>The reforms which have been completed by Said Pacha, the Minister
of Justice, are not of a nature to encourage the hopes of the people.
A large number of new officials have been appointed, but they are of
the same class as those already in office. Indeed, there seems to have
been a special purpose in these appointments of making it known to
the people that no change was to be expected in the method of
administering the law. Only seventeen out of one hundred and eighty-three
of these new officials are Christians, and the Turkish papers take
pains to declare that it is absurd to suppose that Christians are competent
to hold these offices. This is the result of the demand of Lord
Salisbury that the Courts of the Empire should be reorganized under
European control. They will continue to be what they have been, and
it will be but a small consolation to the suffering people of Turkey to
know that they have been condemned in strong terms by the British
Government. The worst feature of the case is that the law offers no
man any protection against arbitrary arrest and imprisonment. A man
may be thrown into prison and kept there for years without any trial
or any knowledge of the charges brought against him. Such cases are
very common. Or he may he beaten by the police, or chained in a
dungeon, on the most frivolous charge. I knew a case the other day
of a Greek who was severely beaten because he requested a police officer
to arrest a Turk who was plundering his shop in broad day. All this
was done in the presence of a European gentleman, too. There are
several Armenians in prison now in Constantinople whose only offence
was the wearing of hats in place of the fez. At the same time, crimes
of every description are committed with impunity without any apparent
effort on the part of the authorities to discover the perpetrators.
Almost in sight of Constantinople, and under the immediate jurisdiction
of the capital, is a district where for months the peaceful inhabitants
of Adabazar have been plundered and murdered by the Circassians.
They have appealed again and again to Constantinople for protection.
They have tried to interest the Ambassadors in their behalf. They sent
a deputation to the Grand Vizier. He had no time to see them, but
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span>
turned them over to another official who requested them to present him
in writing a statement of the reforms which they thought were needed
in the Empire! A few hundred soldiers, or even one determined man
sent from Constantinople, would have restored order; but nothing could
be done. Five men were murdered while the deputation was in this
city. The whole Turkish coast of the Black Sea is infested with
brigands who plunder at will. They are well known, but no one
thinks of arresting or punishing them. Travellers are only secure
when they are provided with a safe-conduct from the leaders. The
Reports of the new Consuls in Asia Minor acknowledge a state of
things which is almost too bad to be believed. There is no security in
the administration of the law for person, property, or life, and there
seems to be no prospect of any improvement. Some more radical
reform is needed than the appointment of one hundred and sixty-six
new Turkish judges.</p>

<p>A scheme of financial reform has also been projected, and the foreign
Embassies have been invited to nominate a certain number of persons
as inspectors to superintend the collection of the revenue; but this is
nothing new. The Imperial Ottoman Bank has nominally held this
position for many years, and at times has exercised some control, no
doubt with advantage to the Government. A new system of taxation,
carried out under the control of honest and responsible Europeans,
would increase the revenue of the Government without adding to the
burdens of the people; but the place where reform is most needed is in
the expenditure rather than the collection of the revenue. The present
scheme does not command confidence in Constantinople in regard to
the collection of the taxes, and it offers no security for the control of
the expenses of the Government. The truth is that the whole financial
system is hopelessly corrupt, and, however it may be patched or mended,
it will be rotten still. There is no hope for the Turkish Government
until it is ready to put its finances into the hands of competent Europeans
who shall have absolute control over everything connected with expenditure
as well as collection; and I am sorry to say that there seems to be
no present prospect of any such arrangement. The enormous expenditure
of the Palace is unlimited and uncontrolled, and the Sultan will
not submit to any control. Financial reform must begin there, or it
will amount to nothing. The present Sultan before he came to the
throne was known to be a very careful and economical man, and no
doubt he would be glad to be so now, but he has not the courage to
break with the traditions of the past—give up his thousands of slaves,
women, and palace officials, and live like a European sovereign rather
than an Oriental despot. So long as he maintains the present system
he must have money, no matter who starves for want of it; and he
must continue to take money, on his personal order, from whatever
department of the Government may be so happy as to have any in its
treasury.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span></p>

<p>The Government is bankrupt; its revenues are not half enough to
meet its current expenses; its army is starving; its civil service forced
to live on plunder; its income mortgaged for years in advance to secure
loans on which it is paying thirty or forty per cent. interest in one form
or another; but still no one would dare to suggest to the Sultan the
possibility of his reducing his own expenses to a sum equal to that
expended by the Queen of England. Thus far all talk of financial
reform is prompted by the desire to borrow more money in Europe to
meet the present wants of the Government. These difficulties once
surmounted, everything would go on as before. It is no friendship to
Turkey to lend her money, until such time as the Sultan and his
Ministers are ready for a real reform, beginning at the Palace, and conducted
under the control of Europeans appointed and supported by their
own Governments. But there is no prospect of any such arrangement.</p>

<p>The Turks do not appreciate the dangers which beset them. They
see that the country is in an unsettled state, and they feel the want of
money; but the evils of which the people complain are nothing new.
They exist now in an aggravated form, on account of the war and the
confusion which has reigned for several years at Constantinople; but
the Turks see no reason why they should not be reduced to a normal
state, and be quietly endured for centuries to come, as they have been
for centuries past. Their attention is directed exclusively to their
foreign relations, and whatever is said or done about reform is intended
solely to conciliate public opinion in Europe. Could the rulers here
be brought face to face with a really independent Representative
Assembly, freely chosen by the people, they would be made to think
less of Europe and more of Turkey. They would see that their rule
has become well-nigh intolerable, even to the Mussulman population
of the Empire. Then there would be some hope of genuine administration
and financial reform. It is even possible that the Christian
element in such an Assembly might be strong enough to secure, in
time, the emancipation of the non-Mussulman population—and it
should never be forgotten that this must come in some form. England
does not insist upon it now, but she will, and so will all Europe.
It would be far better for Turkey if it could be brought about by the
Christians themselves; but if it is not, it will be forced upon the
Turks by direct European intervention, or possibly by the overthrow of
the Empire.</p>

<h4>The Egyptian Crisis.</h4>

<p>The affairs of Egypt have been so fully discussed in England that
it is unnecessary for me to do more than to indicate the course of
thought on this subject at Constantinople. At the outset, the Sultan
and his Ministers sympathized with the Khedive. They feared that
European intervention at Cairo would pave the way for a similar intervention
here; and when he appealed to the Sultan he had reason to
expect his support. But the Turks thought they saw their opportunity
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span>
to regain their hold on Egypt, and the Khedive was summarily
removed. The Turkish papers here did not hesitate to rejoice over it
as a “new conquest of Egypt,” and it is still believed here that this
view of the subject was encouraged by England, that it was the purpose
of Lord Beaconsfield to escape from the embarrassing demands of
France by restoring Egypt to the control of the Sultan.</p>

<p>But when the Turks found that they had been misled or mistaken,
and that Egypt was less than ever under their control, they regretted
the steps which had been taken, and began once more to sympathize
with the Khedive whom they had deposed. He was very liberal in
his expenditure of money at Constantinople, and always found it for
his interest to maintain a host of retainers here; but the new Khedive
will have no money to spend here, and will need agents in Paris and
London rather than in Constantinople. The tribute-money no longer
comes here, but is paid to bondholders in England and France. There
is no hope of putting any more Turks into lucrative offices in Egypt.
In short, the connection of that country with Turkey is no longer
anything more than nominal, and the Turks feel their disappointment
very keenly. They have now but one hope left. They understand
very well the difficulties which must arise from a joint protectorate by
France and England, and hope that the mutual jealousies of these
Powers may throw Egypt once more into the hands of Turkey. The
tone of the French press, even of so cautious and conservative a
periodical as the <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, gives them some ground for
this hope; but the Khedive lost his throne by giving too much importance
to this mutual jealousy, which manifested itself much more
plainly in Egypt than it did in Europe; and it is to be hoped that the
Turks will be equally disappointed. Every one in the East regards the
present situation as impracticable and temporary, but it may result in
the independence of Egypt under a general European protectorate, or
in a further division of the Ottoman Empire by the annexation of
Egypt to England and Syria to France. The opportunity of annexing
Egypt without compensation to France was lost when England refused
to listen to the suggestions of Germany three years ago, because, as
Lord Derby is reported to have said, it would have shocked the moral
sense of the world.</p>

<h4>The Greek Question.</h4>

<p>The Greek Question is not a simple one. Very few questions connected
with the East are simple. The aspirations of the kingdom of
Greece are natural. Her appeal to Europe was justifiable, and there
can be no question of the advantage which it would be to Greece, and
to the populations of Epirus, Thessaly, and Crete, if these provinces
were annexed to the kingdom. If this were all, they would be annexed,
and all the world would rejoice. It is to be regretted that the Congress
of Berlin did not shut its eyes to other considerations and settle it
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span>
off-hand in this way; but they did not, and no Power now exists which
can do so.</p>

<p>These provinces belong to Turkey, and she cannot see that it is for
her interest to give them up. Greece cannot possibly offer her anything
in return for them, and, as against Turkey, she has no claim
upon them. The Congress of Berlin advised Turkey to arrange, by
friendly negotiation, for the cession of a part of them; but there is
really no ground upon which a negotiation can be based. Turkey is
ready to yield something out of respect to Europe, but she naturally
wishes to give up as little as possible. Then there are other Powers
interested. Austria and Italy, but especially the former, have their
own views of the destiny of European Turkey, and their own plans of
aggrandizement. Albania and Macedonia have to be considered.
England, France, and Russia, also, are looking forward to the future,
and questioning how the settlement of this question will affect their
plans for the final solution of the Eastern Question. Here is room for
intrigues without end, and complications without limit.</p>

<p>The Greeks are indignant, especially against England and Austria;
and their papers here have used some very disagreeable language. They
are now solemnly protesting against the right of Sir A. H. Layard and
Count Zichy to take a short vacation, so long as this question remains
unsettled. Some of them seem to believe that Osman Pacha really
contemplates a reconquest of Greece itself, and that England might consent
to it. All this is absurd; but there can be no doubt about the fact
that England and Austria have thus far opposed the claims of Greece,
and that Austria and Turkey have, each in her own way, contributed to
excite discontent in Albania, and keep up a state of anarchy in Macedonia.
A leading paper in Vienna, ten days ago, openly declared that
it was the intention of Austria to push on to Salonica, after taking possession
of Novi Bazaar. She certainly has very little sympathy with
Greece, and if this question is to be settled at all she will keep the
Greeks as far from Salonica as possible.</p>

<p>The Turkish papers are allowed to discuss this question with perfect
freedom, and one of the most moderate, the <i>Djeridei-Havadis</i>, says:—</p>

<div class="blockquot"><p>“If the Hellenic Kingdom is desirous of avoiding a war with the Albanians,
it ought to follow the line of conduct proposed by the Porte. If it acts in opposition
to it, a war will follow which can only result in ruin, as has happened
before. If the Porte had only to satisfy Greece, it is probable that it would
show itself yielding, but the Imperial Government cannot, with a light heart,
provoke a conflict and see the blood of its subjects poured out, for the Albanians
have decided to defend their country, arms in hand. It is astonishing that
Europe, in seconding the demands of Greece, completely forgets the rights of the
Albanians.”</p></div>

<p>The Commission appointed to settle this question is now in session at
Constantinople, and some arrangement may be made, but the current
opinion in the city, among both Greeks and Turks, is that neither party
will yield anything. Another meeting is to be held to-morrow; and if
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span>
the Greeks are ready to give up Janina, a settlement is possible—in spite
of the Albanians. The impression is that they will not fight, although
the Greeks in Thessaly and Epirus have roused their hostility, and have
failed to do anything to conciliate them in past years. They have an
honest fear of being Hellenized by force, and although they have little
sympathy for the Turkish Government, and are constantly quarrelling
among themselves, they still have a strong national pride, and they may
take up arms in good earnest. If they do, it will be a serious matter for
Greece.</p>

<h4>The Principality of Bulgaria.</h4>

<p>Bulgaria is enjoying a brief period of comparative repose. The Russians
have left the country. The Prince has assumed the reins of Government.
The people are busy with their harvests, and, except in certain
districts where the disbanded soldiers of the Turkish army have taken to
brigandage, there is peace and quiet everywhere, and there is no reason
to fear anything more disquieting than the excitement of a general
election.</p>

<p>The Principality has a great advantage over Eastern Roumelia, in
that it has secured its independence, and can work out its destiny by
itself, without any interference on the part of the Turks or of an
European Commission; but both Prince and people are without experience,
and there are no popular leaders who have any practical knowledge of
government. The people are jealous of their newly-acquired rights, and
naturally opinionated and disputatious. The coming elections will no
doubt cause great political excitement, and the new Assembly will not be
very easily managed, or be likely to win the admiration of Europe by its
wisdom. It should be remembered, however, that this lack of experience
is the misfortune and not the fault of the Bulgarians, and that Europe
has not dealt with them in a way to win their confidence and command
their respect. It has left them with a grievance which they can never
forget for a moment, which must influence all their political action, and
which forces them to maintain intimate relations with Russia, which is
not a country where they can learn political wisdom, although it has
given them a Constitution which is a model of liberality. There was
nothing in the Russian administration of the province which was adapted
to prepare them for such a Constitution, or teach them how to conduct
a free and liberal government. Prince and people have to begin everything
for themselves. Indeed, they are probably worse off than they
would have been if there had been no civil administration attempted in the
province by the Russians. An army of occupation of any country is
unfitted for the organization of civil government. This was attempted
on a grand scale in the Southern States of America after the civil war,
and under exceptionally favourable circumstances, but all these civil
governments, established and fostered by military force, were unsatisfactory
while they continued, and disappeared when the army was withdrawn.
If this was a work which could not be accomplished by the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span>
United States, and by an army which was made up chiefly of civilians,
it is not strange that, with all possible goodwill, the Czar of Russia failed
to establish a satisfactory civil administration in Bulgaria. He gave
them as good a Prince as was to be found in the German market, and as
liberal a Constitution as any in Europe. He maintained order and protected
all classes as long as his soldiers remained in the country; but the
whole administration was necessarily Russian in its spirit and methods,
and altogether unlike what it ought to be under the new Constitution.
The Bulgarians who were trained under it will have to unlearn much
that they have learned, and begin anew, or they will fail to satisfy
the people. All this is the misfortune rather than the fault of the
nation, and it has a right to expect that Europe will be patient and
friendly, while it gains by experience the wisdom which no nation has
ever acquired in any other way.</p>

<p>Prince Alexander is young, and as inexperienced as his people, but
those who know him best have confidence in his good sense, and he is
said to be not unlike the late Prince Albert in character. He will need
all his good qualities to attain success; and if successful, he will certainly
deserve to be ranked with the Prince Consort and King Leopold.
His work certainly involves more self-denial than either of theirs, and
not less tact and good sense. He was no doubt elected through the
influence of Russia; but he is no mere creature of the Czar, and has no
desire to act as a Russian agent. On the contrary, he is heartily in
sympathy with the liberal ideas of the West, and anxious to secure the
goodwill of England. Thanks to the efforts of Mr. Palgrave, the English
Consul-General, this does not seem to the Bulgarians so hopeless a task
as it once did.</p>

<p>The Prince was received by his people with the greatest enthusiasm.
No sovereign was ever more heartily welcomed, and each stage of his
journey was a new triumph. He probably appreciated this all the more
from the fact that his visit to Constantinople was made as disagreeable
as possible. He was first refused permission to come at all, on the
pretence that his life would be in danger. This plea was too absurd to
deceive any one, but it might have caused serious difficulty if he had
not appealed to the Great Powers, and at the same time manifested a
disposition to conciliate the Porte by proposing to limit his stay at
Constantinople to a visit of a few hours. He arrived in the Bosphorus
in the morning, and left in the afternoon. He was received by the
Sultan, but was told that owing to the pressure of business his Firman
was not ready, and could not be delivered to him. No Bulgarian was
allowed to approach him, and no boat allowed to go out to his steamer.
Large bodies of troops were stationed along his route and about the
Russian Embassy, and he was treated very much like a prisoner of State.
It is not easy to understand why this farce was played by the Turks, or
what they expected to gain by it. They probably refused the permission
in the first place with the intention of treating him as an ordinary
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span>
Turkish Vali, and sending his Firman to be read in public at Tirnova
by a Turkish official; but after the failure of this plan there was no
obvious reason for treating him as they did at Constantinople. Some
have supposed that it was intended as a studied insult to the Prince,
others that it was an elaborate practical joke played upon the Russian
Embassy, which had at one time suggested that it was unnecessary for
the Prince to come to Constantinople, as other vassal Princes had always
done. But whatever may have been the motive which prompted this
singular treatment, it only served to make the reception of the Prince
the next day at Varna more impressive, and to give more importance to
the wild enthusiasm of his new subjects, who could not have received
him with greater joy if he had himself just delivered them from the
hated rule of the Turks. He was inaugurated at Tirnova, the ancient
capital, and then went at once to Sofia, the new seat of government.
His first difficulty was the choice of a Ministry. Two parties had
already been developed in the Constitutional Assembly which adopted
the Constitution and elected the Prince. They grew out of a difference
of opinion in regard to religious liberty, freedom of the press, the right
of association, with other similar questions, and at once assumed the
names, Conservative and Liberal. The Conservative party included the
clergy of the Bulgarian Church, and some of the best educated and most
enlightened Bulgarians, who felt that too much liberty was a dangerous
thing for a people brought so suddenly from bondage to freedom—who
feared that the country would be flooded with Nihilism, Socialism, and
all other isms. The Liberal party, however, had a large majority in
the Assembly, and was led with considerable skill by two or three experienced
politicians, who were wise enough to avoid extreme measures.
When the Prince arrived, he attempted to form a Ministry which should
include the leaders of both these parties; but for some reason the
majority of those selected were Conservatives, and the Liberals declined
to serve with them, so that he has a Conservative Ministry, with the
probability that the new Assembly will have a strong Liberal majority.
This is an unfortunate beginning, as the party conflict which is likely to
ensue will probably weaken the influence of some of the best men in the
nation, who are really Liberal in their views, but who fear that absolute
liberty will degenerate into license and sap the foundations of religion
and morality. They do not think that the people are ready for “a free
Church in a free State.” They fail to see that the influence of the
Church can only be strengthened by educating the clergy and reviving
their spiritual life. The Bulgarians are naturally a religious people; but,
both while they were under the Greek Patriarch, and since they have
received their independence, their Church has been an essentially political
organization. It needs now to be spiritualized. The best men of
both parties acknowledge this; but, as in all other countries, there is
a difference of opinion as to how far it should be defended and supported
by the State.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span></p>

<p>I have said that this division of parties was an unfortunate beginning
for this new State, but after all it is far better that there should be real
living questions before the people than that politics should degenerate
into a new struggle for office. The very discussion of these questions
will tend to educate the people and revive the Church, and it will probably
be found that when a new Liberal Ministry is formed the responsibilities
of office will make it as conservative in most respects as the
present Government. The Prince has the confidence of all the people,
and will no doubt accept the result of the coming elections as a Constitutional
sovereign, and then direct the attention of the people to other
questions of the utmost importance concerning the organization of the
various departments of the Government. No doubt serious difficulties
will be encountered and mistakes will be made, but the spirit of the
people is good. They desire good order, peace, and quiet, and they will
make every effort to secure it. They merit the sympathy and goodwill
of all civilized nations, and especially of those who believe in free
government and liberal institutions.</p>

<h4>Eastern Roumelia.</h4>

<p>The condition of affairs in Eastern Roumelia is much less hopeful, as
the difficulties encountered in the organization of the Government are
very much greater and more numerous. North of the Balkans they
are only such as might be experienced by any new Representative
Government in any civilized country, but in the nondescript province of
Roumelia the people are suffering from evils inflicted upon them by the
Congress of Berlin. Everything is unsettled. No one knows who
rules the country, or what is the form of government. It seems to be
for the interest of certain parties to prolong this state of things and
introduce as much disorder as possible. The people are kept in a
constant state of excitement, and no one knows what to expect from one
day to another. The Congress of Berlin is primarily responsible for
this, and no doubt it was for the interest of Austria to keep up a
state of anarchy and confusion in European Turkey. It was her plan
to absorb the European provinces herself, and the way must be kept
open to Salonica and if possible to Constantinople. It is believed here
that England went to Berlin with a secret agreement to support these
pretensions of Austria, but no one sees exactly how England is to
profit by this arrangement. It is certain that no one in Turkey gained
anything by the division of Bulgaria, but the evils which have resulted
would have been much less if in addition to this division the Congress
had not devised the extraordinary scheme of giving different forms of
Government to the two Bulgarias. This plan, of course, insured the
permanent discontent of the whole Bulgarian nation, but, worse than
this, it made the impression upon the Turks and Greeks that the
arrangement for Eastern Roumelia was only a temporary one, and that
by skilful agitation they might overturn it. They have not failed to
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span>
improve this opportunity. The Phanariote and Roumelian Greeks are
doing everything in their power to create disturbance and cause difficulty
in Eastern Roumelia. An unceasing torrent of abuse is poured
out upon the Bulgarians by the Greek papers and their French organ
the <i>Phare du Bosphore</i>. They are full of false statements and misrepresentations
of every kind, and a portion of the Greeks in the province
act in full sympathy with these papers. Free Greece does not
sympathize with this crusade, and an attempt was made a few weeks
since to induce the Greeks here to come to an understanding with the
Bulgarian Church, by withdrawing the excommunication and arranging
for harmonious co-operation. It is understood that the Patriarch was
in favour of this, but the Greek papers here opposed it with a violence
which was incomprehensible to the uninitiated. They declared that
“the maintenance of the schism was the only hope of Hellenism,” and
appealed to the Porte to prevent by force a reconciliation “which
would inevitably result in the union of Greeks and Bulgarians to drive
out the Turks and divide the country between them,” This opposition
on the part of the Phanariotes prevented the execution of the plan.</p>

<p>The Turks also are doing what they can to create disturbance in the
province, and find some excuse for occupying it with their army. This
was, of course, to be expected, and is in some degree excusable. They
naturally wish to regain possession of this rich province, and they feel
that they have cause of complaint against the Bulgarians, who do not
receive the returning refugees with much cordiality. There are real
difficulties on both sides which cannot fail to give rise to serious trouble.
It is a pity that the whole arrangement could not have been left to a
really impartial Commission, free to act on principles of equity and
common sense. The difficulties are such as these, for example. There
are many towns where the Bulgarian quarter was burned by the Turks.
When the Turks fled and the Bulgarians returned, they occupied the
Turkish houses, and they are now naturally disinclined to give them up
to the refugees and camp in the fields. Again, there are many cases
where the Bulgarians were deprived of their lands in the most iniquitous
manner some years ago, under the pretence of a new law in regard to
title-deeds. These lands were seized by rich Turks, who fled during the
war, but now come back to claim them. The Bulgarians have the
original titles and the Turks new ones. To whom do the lands rightly
belong?</p>

<p>There are other cases where Turks return who are known to have
taken part in the massacres. There has been a general amnesty, but it
can hardly be expected that these persons will be well received. These
are only a few of the many difficulties connected with the return of the
refugees which irritate the Turks and the Bulgarians both; and in some
cases both parties merit our sympathy.</p>

<p>In addition to these deliberate attempts to make trouble on the part
of the Turks, Greeks, and also of some few hot-headed Bulgarians who
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span>
are foolish enough to suppose that a disturbance might hasten their
union with the Principality, the confusion in the Government is a source
of constant trouble. No one knows what the Government is. The
Porte claims supreme authority, and sends peremptory orders to the
Pacha. The Pacha naturally considers himself the head of the Government.
The European Commission claims the right to exercise control
whenever it sees fit. The Consuls assume the right to intrigue or to
dictate in the name of their respective Governments. The Administrative
Council, a majority of which is Bulgarian, considers itself to be
responsible for the administration, and there is a Constitution of hundreds
of articles which is theoretically the law of the land. A National
Assembly is soon to be added to the list. The militia have been under
the command of a Levantine Frenchman, who was not responsible to
the Governor, and who does not appear to have had a single qualification
for his office. Happily he has just been replaced by a better
man.</p>

<p>Having inflicted all this confusion upon Eastern Roumelia, the European
Powers are complaining that the people do not know how to
govern themselves! Perhaps they do not, but as yet they have had no
opportunity to make the experiment. If peace and quiet is ever to be
restored to this unhappy province, the Government must be simplified
and consolidated; it must be left to manage its own affairs, and to
make the best it can of the elaborate Constitution which Europe has
conferred upon it. Alecko Pacha is not a great man, but he was the
best man available for his position, and he is a man who is much more
likely to throw up his office in disgust at the trouble which it gives him
than to lend himself to any scheme for resisting the will of Europe.
He ought to be encouraged and supported. The Bulgarians, who constitute
the majority of the population, are discontented at the arbitrary
action which separated them from the Principality, but they are satisfied
that they have nothing to gain from any present agitation of this
question, and they only desire to be left to govern themselves in
accordance with the decision of Europe, and to be assured that they
will not be turned over again to the tender mercies of the Turkish
Government. The fear of this is universal, and it is this fear which
keeps them in a state of constant excitement. It is not without reason.
A large Turkish army is camped on their borders. The Porte is seeking
some excuse for entering the province. Certain European representatives
at Philippopolis are always threatening this, and the people believe
that they are intriguing to bring it about. Everything is in confusion
and uncertainty in regard to the Government, and nothing seems
settled. There can be no peace and quiet in a country which is in
constant fear of invasion, and something ought to be done to remove
this fear from Eastern Roumelia. The Turkish army should certainly
be removed, and the Porte should be warned to let Alecko Pacha alone
and allow him to organize his Government as best he can. If this
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span>
source of fear and irritation were removed, the Bulgarians would
accept the situation and make the best of it. It would be for their
interest to do so, and an industrious, thrifty population is always quick
to see what is for its interest.</p>

<p>The gymnastic clubs, which were originally formed for another
purpose, are now kept up and supported by sober, conservative men,
simply from this fear of a Turkish invasion. If the fear were removed
these associations would be dissolved at once, as they ought to be; for
Bulgarian merchants are not in the habit of spending money for anything
which is not essential to their well-being. These clubs are not
revolutionary, but they might become a source of disorder if they were
made permanent.</p>

<p>It is not probable that the European Powers will allow any invasion
of the country; but the Turks have always in hand the pretence of
sending troops to occupy the Balkans, and this fact to some extent
justifies the fears of the Bulgarians. If there were danger of another
Russian invasion, the Turks would be fully justified in occupying the
passes at once, and there is nothing in Eastern Roumelia to prevent or
even delay such an occupation; but under present circumstances, when
there is nothing to be feared from Russia—when peace and quiet is the
thing of all others to be desired—the occupation of the Balkans would
be a crime.</p>

<p class="author"><span class="smcap">An Eastern Statesman.</span></p>

<hr />

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span></p>

<h2>CONTEMPORARY BOOKS.</h2>

<h3>I.—HISTORY AND LITERATURE OF THE EAST.</h3>

<p class="center">(<i>Under the Direction of</i> Professor <span class="smcap">E. H. Palmer</span>.)</p>

<p>Colonel Malleson certainly did well to claim permission to rewrite Sir
John Kaye’s last volume (<i>History of the Indian Mutiny</i>, by Colonel Malleson,
Vol. I., London: W. H. Allen &amp; Co.), and comparison of the two may afford to the
historian of the future valuable aid in interpreting the volumes yet to come. A great
part of the present must be held to be the work of the virulent pamphleteer and violent
partisan rather than of the historian; and if the quotations of, and references to, the
Red Pamphlet indicate relations between Colonel Malleson and its author, the
publishers cannot be held to have exercised a wise discretion in their choice.</p>

<p>The task of the reviewer of such a book is unusually heavy. Book for book,
almost chapter for chapter, it is intended to replace Sir John Kaye’s work, and the
reviewer therefore needs to study the two carefully, and to compare them minutely.
Colonel Malleson, no doubt, had access to Sir John Kaye’s materials, but within a
certain field seems to have been unable to see the other side of any question. To
arm, to leave Sepoys armed, is simply to detain European troops to watch them;
it is nothing that to disarm them is to drive them, and all their connections, wild
with terror as sheep marked for the slaughter; yet he cannot be ignorant of the
cases in which a few bad men committed a regiment, and how whole regiments
“went” in terror of their masters’ vengeful
distrust.<a name="FNanchor_105" id="FNanchor_105"></a><a href="#Footnote_105" class="fnanchor">[105]</a>
In saying, as he does so
confidently, that by enrolling the Calcutta Volunteers on their first offer, on 20th
May, Lord Canning would have set free half a European regiment, Colonel Malleson
must have been thinking of what the Volunteers might have been fit to do had they
been enrolled and drilled six months before,—provided they had been willing to take
the day-work of garrison duty, and to think more of the State than of the house
and furniture at Ballygunj: the real profit of the enrolment was the confidence and
cheerfulness organization gave to the Europeans themselves. And—to take a more
important instance—the “Gagging Act” was an insolent expression of distrust of
Englishmen, an attempt to prevent their opinions reaching England <i>in print</i>. For
distrust of their discretion English editors had given cause enough, and for influencing
English opinion, as Indian newspapers may be said to be unknown in England
in their original sheets, a letter from the editor of the <i>Friend of India</i> to any
English paper would have been as sure of English readers, and of as much weight
with them, as if it had been set up in the damp printing-house at Serampore.</p>

<p>Colonel Malleson quotes from the “Red Pamphlet,” as Sir John Kaye had done
before him, a smart description of “Panic Sunday.” From Colonel Cavanagh’s
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span>
report it seems pretty clear that the higher classes—the “society”—of Calcutta were
not among the refugees in the fort, and as Secretaries to Government and Members of
Council may be counted on the fingers, it would be as well if the historian would
name the fugitives before death takes all who could answer the charge. We have
had access to the diary of a young civilian, then a guest of the Member of Council
who lived furthest from Government House, away in Alipore, beyond the house
of the Lieutenant-Governor and the great jail of Alipore and the lines of the
native regiment which was the great terror of Calcutta: on that Sunday, host and
guest went to the Cathedral twice as usual, and after the evening service the
guest returned home, while the host drove to Calcutta to call on some cousins;
as the cousins had driven to Alipore, and the visitors at both houses waited a while
those households at least were afoot till a later hour than usual, and at last went to
bed as usual without closing an extra door.</p>

<p>The second chapter closes with an impassioned peroration, wherein the removal of
Mr. William Tayler from his post at Patna is likened to the judicial murder of
Lally, and the starvation of Dupleix. It is clear enough, from Colonel Malleson’s
account, that Mr. Tayler liked to carry out his own plans too well to risk interference
by over-frankness to his superiors. In the face of an enemy such concealment
may be as mischievous as disobedience, and Sir John Kaye reminds us that at an
earlier date confidence in Mr. Tayler’s judgment had been shaken; and his report of
his message to his district officers, the report which immediately preceded, and
probably led to, his suspension, says nothing of the clause which sets the treasure above
anything save human life. Under any circumstances Mr. Tayler’s defence is not
helped by sharp censures on Mr. Money, or by blindness to the fact that the best
intelligence made a march to Patna seem more perilous than the far longer one
through a jungle country to Calcutta. Wise after the event, indeed, we may see
that Mr. Tayler’s forecast was sounder than Mr. Halliday’s; but the Lieutenant-Governor,
and Lord Canning too, could only act on the circumstances known to
them, and Mr. Tayler was replaced by an officer of yet higher rank in the official
hierarchy, and probably forestalled renewed promotion by resigning the Service as
soon as he could get a pension. But why were not his services rewarded? asks
Colonel Malleson, ready with the hard word “intrigue.” But who were the sharers
in the intrigue, and who was to profit by it? Men whom Lord Canning sharply
rebuked and degraded were yet recommended by him for honour, and no courteous
letter from Mr. Talbot can do away with the fact that the Viceroy, writing when
all heat of strife was over and all facts known, yet did not obtain for Mr. Tayler any
distinction.</p>

<p>On one point, however, we are bound to protest against Sir John Kaye’s harsh
judgment: to him the arrest of the Wahabi leaders was a scandalous breach of
the usages of war. But they were unquestionably subjects of the British Crown,
and the question surely is—would they have resisted arrest by ordinary process or
not? If not, they had to thank Mr. Tayler for courteous consideration in arresting
them himself, and detaining them in honourable captivity; in resisting they would
have been guilty of that rebellion against their sovereign in which there was too
good reason to believe them sharers.</p>

<p>On the many points whereon both authors are in substantial accord it would be
waste of space to touch, and we pass to the other important episode in which Colonel
Malleson traverses Sir John Kaye’s judgment, and here our verdict is with the later
author: in treating of Durand’s conduct at Indore, Colonel Malleson seems to have
risen above the region of personal feeling, if not of personal knowledge; so that while
his full and vivid narrative shows plainly the difficulties, political and strategical, of
Durand’s position and also of his retreat, he shows as clearly that it is no simple case
of Durand <i>versus</i> Holkar, but one in which each may be commended without loss of
credit to the other.</p>

<p>So much space has been of necessity devoted to the chief points on which the two
authors are at variance, that none is left for the transactions which Colonel Malleson’s
changed arrangement brings into the present volume, though Kaye had intended
for them a place in some later one. His work in the new field makes us only the
more regret that he did not bring to his task the unbiassed mind of a man who had
never known the author of the Red Pamphlet or Mr. William Tayler. But we would,
in a concluding word, beg him to revise his Indian spelling; to a man who has once
felt the charm of a fancy rule the claims of established usage go for nothing, but at
all events he may be decently consistent; why does Colonel Malleson double so many
letters which in Urdu are single, and why does he spell the name of the ancient and
famous, if now obscure, town of Jaunpore as though it were “the City of Life”?
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span></p>

<p>Captain Low’s <i>History of the Indian Navy</i> (2 vols., London: Bentley &amp; Son)
has long been reproachfully demanding notice; it is easy to say something about such
a work, not easy to treat it worthily. A man could hardly put together 1100 pages
of small type without recording many noteworthy facts, but all matters of interest
might have been packed in much smaller compass, and so packed would have found
more readers and a more favourable verdict.</p>

<p>The two volumes trace the rise and fall of the Navy from its germ in the “ten
grabs and galivats” taken up for the defence of the factory and shipping of Surat in
1615, through the period of its glory when its ships bore the Company’s flag alongside
of the Royal Navy on many hard-fought days, through its decline, when they
carried mails or transported troops with rare enjoyment of a brush, to its abolition
in our own time, when, less fortunate than its sister service, it fell a victim to mutiny
and disorders in which it had no share.</p>

<p>The first period in its history ends with the year 1759, when, with the capture of
Gheriah, and the destruction of Angria’s power, piracy as a business of State came
to an end, and when the ruin of the Seedee, and the substitution of the Company as
High Admiral of the Mogul Empire, placed the local Marine first among the maritime
powers of India. Its first serious service was in the operations which broke the
power of the Portuguese in the Gulf, and in 1622 reduced Ormuz from an emporium
of proverbial wealth and magnificence to its normal condition of a poor barren island,
and for many years the Portuguese found it as much occupation as the pirates who
might well have been its first concern. No doubt the captains of well-armed India-men,
whose crews were borrowed for service on grabs and galivats, looked down on
the latter as a sort of coastguard, but the aid of such light craft was invaluable against
the shoals of small vessels which beset new-comers fore and aft, pouring down crowds
of well-armed men from their long overhanging prows. For in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries the shores of the Indian Ocean swarmed with pirates, kept
down indeed by the Portuguese in the heyday of their power, but making head again
till, by the middle of the seventeenth century, according to Italian travellers, they
feared none but Dutch and English, and these only for a pestilent practice of firing
the magazine rather than surrender. Yet to the Mogul governor of Surat probably
the pirate of home growth was less objectionable than the intrusive trader; and indeed
the Nuwab was not without excuse if he regarded the European as a more powerful
pirate, seeing that some commanders took by force goods which the native owner
would not sell, others ransacked ships not said to belong to the Mogul’s ports, the
mutinous crews of others became open pirates; and lastly, we find Captain Kidd, and
other heroes of the black flag, practising their vocation in these seas. The native
pirate, the European rival, and the professional rover, kept the local marine pretty
well employed, but it is not always easy to distinguish between the services of this
body and the Company’s armed trading ships.</p>

<p>Of more interest to the Mogul Government than foreign trade were the vessels in
which Mahomedan pilgrims of all ranks sailed to Arabian and Persian shrines, and
for their benefit it came to terms with the Seedee, better known to us as the Hubshi
of Jinjirah, the boldest of the pirates, giving him a large allowance and high rank to
secure his convoy. The Company made more than one attempt to supplant him, and
indeed furnished ships to guard the Mocha-Jeddah fleet in 1698, but the Seedee kept
his office till 1759; in the general decay of the central power he first neglected, then
openly defied, the Governor of Surat, and instead of protecting trade became its
chief oppressor; till at last, in 1759, after much negotiation, the Nuwab induced the
Bombay Government to intervene, and as a reward obtained for the Company the
Seedee’s office. What direct profit the Company derived from the appointment
Captain Low does not tell us; the omission can hardly be the consequence of the
lamented destruction of papers which followed the sale of the old India House, for he
records that in 1694 the Seedee’s subsidy amounted to four lacs, no doubt considerably
bettered by presents, and in 1735 the money allowance was but a lac and a half: the
revenues of the districts and customs assigned to the Company went to support the
Surat squadron, but the fees of office granted to the officer who was its deputy
amounted, to near a lac of rupees a year; it is well to remember that the holder’s gross
pay was but Rs.1,000 a year, that the Governor of Bombay had but some £500, and
that till near the end of the century private trade was allowed: no one, however,
was permitted to enjoy this great prize for a second year. Whatever were the
profits to the Company, the Nuwab could see that it did more for its wages
than the Seedee, for in the next nine years the Surat squadron destroyed near
a hundred pirate vessels of the Gulfs of Cutch and Cambay.</p>

<p>After another seventy years the Bombay Marine became in name what, as the only
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span>
local armed fleet, it had long been in fact—the Indian Navy. Wherever round the
basin of the Indian Ocean there had been fighting in those years, the vessels of the
Bombay Marine had borne the British flag with honour, though the services of
officers and crews, both afloat and ashore, had been too sparingly recognised. And
in those years was commenced the series of surveys which are still the chief
authorities for the navigation of the Eastern seas, and have given the names of
Rennie, Moresby, Haines, and Taylor a permanent place in history. But men who
entered the Bombay Marine were still serving efficiently when the Indian Navy was
abolished, in the belief that ships of the Royal Navy would carry on the police of the
seas as efficiently, but at less annual cost, and that other arrangements might be
made for the business of inland navigation and transport; the necessity for recurrent
shore surveys seems not to have been foreseen, though already a special department
has been created and placed under a retired officer of the Indian Navy. It is impossible
not to admit that, through its want of influential friends, the Service was
treated unjustly. The guarantee of “Colonel Sykes’s clause” has, through repeated
agitation, been made so effectual for officers of the Indian Army that men of forty
have retired as full colonels, because all their regimental seniors had joined the Staff
Corps, while the officers of the Indian Navy were forced to retire without appeal on
something like the pension of their rank. But they must have felt a grim satisfaction
in knowing that they had outlived the piracy which had been the scourge of Western
India and the first cause of the creation of the force; their last serious service was
in administering a final pounding to their old enemies the Waghers, the last survivors
of the flourishing pirate communities of Kattyawar.</p>

<p>Besides surveys of the Eastern seas, European nations trading with India are
indebted to the Indian Navy for the opening up of the Overland Route, and so,
indirectly, for the construction of the Suez Canal. Without steam, indeed, the Red
Sea could never have become a highway of commerce, while with its extended use
that great canal could not for ever be closed; but the <i>Hugh Lindsay</i> of the Indian
Navy, the first steamer constructed in the East, which, after thirty years of service,
was still staunch enough for work as a tug at Kurachi, was the first steamer to
appear on its waters, making the voyage to and from Suez in 1830, under the command
of Captain John Lindsay. The expense of the voyage, however, was so great
that, after seven trips, the Court bade the Government of Bombay only repeat it in
case of emergency, and it was reserved for Lieutenant Waghorn, also of the Indian
Navy, by sacrifice of his private fortune and professional prospects and ten years’
unceasing labour, to prove that communication with India through the Red Sea was
not only a luxury of State, but a profitable commercial enterprise. From his labours
all have profited save himself and his family, and the only public acknowledgment
of his services is a bust in the Canal Garden at Suez.</p>

<p>With some labour, caused by the want of an index, many notices of interest might
be quarried from Captain Low’s pages. The early history of Bombay, the antecedents
of the rulers of Muscat and Zanzibar, the settlement at Aden, the true story
of Perim, the achievements of the Sepoy Marines, who are now represented by two
regular regiments of the Bombay Army, all invite notice, but our space is exhausted.
Yet we must find room to mention the self-denial of Commodore Hayes, who, rather
than embroil the Company with China, released two junks captured in running the
blockade from Batavia with Dutch property, and so sacrificed his large share of
£600,000 lawful prize; and the gallantry of Midshipman Denton, who, unable to
board a proa, lashed her bowsprit to the taffrail of his gunboat, and so continued his
course, fighting her all the time. And for contrast with the experience of the Bay
of Bengal, where we believe that the full pressure of a great cyclone has never been
recorded, as the anemometers have broken with a pressure of sixty pounds, we may
note that, in the cyclone of November, 1854, so famous at Bombay, the pressure did
not exceed thirty-five pounds to the square foot: with such a storm as that which
raged in Calcutta in October, 1864, the whole native town of Bombay would come
down like a house of cards. We are sorry not to have been able to notice Captain
Low’s labours more favourably; particular points which we had noted for objection
we will pass over in silence.</p>

<hr />

<p>Captain Richard Burton is <i>facile princeps</i> of modern travellers. There
scarcely any part of the world which he has not visited, and wherever he goes he
seems to have the history, geography, and ethnology of the country at his fingers’
ends. His last important contribution to geographical science is the account
of his visit to the Land of Midian, whither he went, commissioned by the ex-Khedive
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span>
of Egypt, in search of the gold mines of which the ancient Arab geographer and
others speak. The results of his expeditions are published in two works: <i>The Gold-Mines
of Midian and the Ruined Midianite Cities</i> (London: C. Kegan Paul &amp; Co.,
1878) and <i>The Land of Midian (Revisited)</i>, 2 vols., issued by the same publishers
during the present year. Having received an invitation from the ex-Viceroy, Captain
Burton proceeded to Cairo in March, 1877, where an expedition was organized for
the purpose of exploring the auriferous region. The author’s comparison of the
Cairo of the present time with the city as he knew it in his old pilgrim days, and as
it is described in Lane’s “Modern Egyptians,” forms, although only incidental, a very
interesting portion of the book. The chapter on Suez also is a good specimen of
Captain Burton’s style, and contains at once a topographical sketch, an archæological
and historical description, and a chatty and amusing account of the modern city, its
society, and surroundings. Midian, called nowadays by its inhabitants, as by the
mediæval Arabic geographers, <i>Arz Maydan</i>, the Land of Midian, is that part of
Arabia which occupies the east coast of the Gulf of Akabah, and extends some two
degrees further to the south. The borders are somewhat difficult to ascertain, and it
is probable that the ancient Midianites, like some of the larger and more powerful
Bedawin tribes of the present day, wandered far and wide, and that their limits
shrunk or extended according to their numbers, or the resisting power of their
neighbours. The ancient history of the land is told by Captain Burton in a most
exhaustive manner, the Biblical accounts being supplemented by copious references
to Greek, Latin, Jewish, and Arabic writers of all ages. The quantity of gold,
silver, and other metals mentioned in Numbers xxxi. 22, as being produced by Midian,
was curiously borne out by the results of the expedition. A lengthy and learned
notice is also given of the Nabathæans, whose former rock-cut capital, Petræa, is still
one of the marvels of Arabia; whose king, or ethnarch, Aretas (in Arabic, El Hareth),
is mentioned in the New Testament; and whose rule embraced so large a portion of
Syria and Arabia, and extended late into Christian times.</p>

<p>The discovery that gold existed in Midian was in the first place due to Haji Wali,
familiar to the readers of Captain Burton’s “Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina” as
the companion of the author in the caravanserai at Cairo while preparing for the
journey to Hejjaz. The old Haji was once returning from a visit to Mecca, when
halting by the shore of the Gulf of Akabah he scooped up a handful of granitic sand
which sparkled in the bed of the wady and took it with him to Alexandria. There he
took his specimen to an assayer, and, although the glitter which had attracted him
proved only to be produced by the presence of mica, his sand when smelted in a
crucible yielded a comparatively large portion of pure gold. The information of the
discovery was not received with encouragement by the official to whom Haji Wali
communicated it, and the latter ceased to think more of the subject. The assayer,
however, set out for the new Eldorado and lost his life, probably murdered by the
Bedawin. Captain Barton believes that the secret of the gold has never been really
lost, and that the washing of sand has always been clandestinely carried on. Be that
as it may, Captain Burton, believing the Haji’s story, endeavoured to recommend his
discovery to the notice of the Egyptian authorities, who <i>pooh-pooh’d</i> the whole thing,
and merely remarked that gold was becoming too common. For nearly a quarter of
a century Captain Burton kept the secret to himself, but at length he again sought
out his old friend Haji Wali, obtained from him more exact information as to the
locality, and carried him off with the expedition, the means for organizing which
Ismail Pasha furnished. The results of the expedition, which was only a pioneer
one, were sufficient to corroborate all that the Haji had said, and to confirm Captain
Burton’s own prognostications drawn from the ancient sources which his extensive
learning enabled him to consult. The adventures of the party fill the remainder of
the first of his two books and form extremely pleasant reading.</p>

<p>The second of the two books contains somewhat less antiquarian research, but
more practical information than the first. It is a record of the second expedition (also
equipped at the expense of the Egyptian Government by order of the ex-Khedive),
and is full of pleasant travel-talk and adventure. Setting out from Cairo in a
sickly season and under the most unfavourable circumstances—the resources of the
country being drained by distress at home and the Turkish-Russian war abroad—they
at length got under way once more for the desert, not without encountering
hair-breadth escapes from the bursting of some of the tubes of the engine of their
steamer. Once landed, the initial difficulties of desert travel had to be encountered.
“It had been reported,” says Captain Burton, “that I was the happy possessor of
£22,000, mostly to be spent in El-Muwaylah. The unsettled Arabs plunder and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span>
slay; the settled Arabs slander and cheat.” These, however, were soon smoothed over
by the commander’s tact and firmness, the rival claims of two tribes to act as escort
were disposed of, and the work of the expedition then began.</p>

<p>The first march, through Madyan proper (North Midian), occupied fifty-four days.
The country was essentially a mining district, and very rich in mineral wealth, though,
strange to say, it had not been much worked by the ancients. The first expedition
found free gold in the basalt, but the researches of the second yielded none. The
second march, through South Midian, lasted eighteen days. Its principal object
was to ascertain the depth from east to west of the quartz formations, and to
explore the virgin region towards the east. Here, however, they were stopped by the
exactions and turbulent conduct of the Maazeh, who tried to pick quarrels with
their Huweitat guides, and made it impossible for Captain Burton to proceed without
such loss of time and other inconveniences as must have sacrificed the other and
more important objects of the expedition. The last journey was through the
southern portion of Midian, and lasted twenty-four days. This part of the country
has been systematically worked in former times, and it is here that the gold and
silver mines are placed by the mediæval Arab geographers.</p>

<p>Throughout Midian, ruined towns, villages, mining stations, and smelting furnaces
were found, testifying to the former mining industry of the country, and described
by Captain Burton in his usual graphic and careful style.</p>

<p>That Midian abounds in mineral wealth, and that gold and silver may be
found in plenty there, is clear both from the documentary evidence of the author and
from the testimony of the physical and geological features of the country. The very
first reconnaissance showed a formation exactly reproducing “the conditions which
Australia shows, and which produced the huge ‘welcome nugget’ of Ballarat.” The
country also closely resembles the known gold-working sites of Ancient Egypt, but
with <i>filons</i> of larger size. Some of these “Ophirs of Egypt Proper” yielded the
treasury of Ramses the Great the enormous sum of £90,000,000 a year, as hieroglyphic
inscriptions tell us. Herodotus, too, tells us of the immense wealth in the
precious metals possessed by some of the Pharaohs. The modern Bedawins have
legends of “gold pieces, square as well as round, bearing, by way of inscription,
‘prayers’ to the Apostle of Allah,” which Captain Burton suspects to be “the Tibr,
or ‘pure gold-dust,’ washed from the sands and cast probably in rude moulds.” The
close proximity to the sea and the facilities of the country for transport, it being
“prepared by Nature to receive a tramway,” remove half the difficulties of working.</p>

<p>That the specimens brought back by Captain Burton’s expedition did not actually
yield a larger proportion of the precious metals is in all probability due to the fact
that they had no expert with them, and did not, therefore, sufficiently seek for
and select stone from the auriferous rocks, but brought away much that the ancients
had rejected, or left as unworkable. He is, however, convinced, as the impartial
reader of his work must also be, that the gold land of Midian is still a fine field for
commercial enterprise, which would soon restore to it the advantages which all
ancient authorities declare that it once possessed.</p>

<hr />

<p>“The Land of Midian” attracted another explorer besides Captain Burton—namely,
the late Dr. Beke, an account of whose labours has been given to the world
by his widow in a bulky volume on the subject. His object was to discover the “true
Mount Sinai,” which he identified with a certain Jebel Barguir, otherwise the “Mountain
of Light,” on the Eastern shore of the Gulf of Akaba, and in which he fancied he saw
the “volcano,” the existence of which he had previously conjectured in his pamphlet,
“Mount Sinai a Volcano.” To make this theory accord with the Scriptural account,
he had not only to shift the scene of the Law-giving from the Sinaitic Peninsula to
the other side of the Gulf, but he was obliged to find another Mizraim than Egypt,
and boldly sacrificed hieroglyphic, Biblical, and classic testimony, as well as that
of tradition, to his own hypothesis. In confirmation of his theory, he found indications
that the Mountain of Light was regarded as a holy place, and discovered
ancient inscriptions near the summit, of which he brought copies home in triumph.
Unfortunately, however, the name <i>Barguir</i> turns out to be his own corruption of
<i>Bakir</i>, a well-known Mohammedan name, and, in the present instance, that of the
petty Arab saint whose tomb gives the only sanctity the mountain may possess,
while the proper name of the mountain is Jebel el Yitm; the inscriptions are only
the ordinary Nabathæan <i>graffiti</i> and Arab-tribe marks, which are so common all over
Arabia Petræa; and lastly, there is no volcano at all. The volume is interesting, as
it contains much topographical information about a country the ancient history and
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span>
future prospects of which render it of the highest importance; but as a contribution
to the literature of the much-vexed question of the Exodus the late Dr. Beke’s work
is absolutely useless. Whether the so-called Peninsula of Sinai is really the scene
of the early portion of that drama, the recent Egyptian researches of Dr. Brugsch
Bey have rendered very doubtful; but wherever Mount Sinai has ultimately to be
placed, it is not that discovered by Dr. Beke.</p>

<hr />

<p>As Mrs. Burton supplemented the “Unexplored Syria” of her husband and the
late C. F. Tyrwhitt Drake with her own more personal but none the less interesting
“Inner Life of Syria,” so she has now embodied her own impression of the various
localities which she and Captain Burton have visited during the last few years in a
pleasant book entitled, <i>A. E. I.: Arabia, Egypt, and India</i> (London: W. Mullan &amp;
Son, 1879). Mrs. Burton’s pages are eminently readable, her powers of observation
are keen, and her descriptions always fresh and vivid. If the spots she writes about
have been often before depicted by pen and pencil, she yet finds something new to say,
and some interesting and little-known historical incident to narrate, concerning them.
The latter part of the book, containing a history and description of the old Portuguese
settlement of Goa, and a minutely-detailed account of the life and works of St.
Francis Xavier, the Apostle of the Indies, will be new to most readers and read with
interest by all. The book is one which may be taken up at any moment with the
certainty of finding something to amuse, instruct, or furnish food for earnest
thought.</p>

<hr />

<p><i>Egypt to Palestine</i>, by S. C. Bartlett, though bearing the name and address of a
London publisher (Sampson Low, Marston, &amp; Co.) on the title-page, is evidently the
production of an American firm, the name of which, indeed, appears on some of the
maps. The book is well got up, and as a description of the localities, their
antiquities and history, is equal to the average of such publications. It is, however,
entirely composed of materials collected from the works of other authors, taken often
without acknowledgment, and is profusely illustrated by pictures and maps copied
from other works, the sources of which are never acknowledged at all. The only
passages at all original in the work are those which describe Mr. Bartlett’s own
journey, the highest interest of which consists in an occasional enumeration of the
hymns he and his companions sang to the Arabs (cf. p. 193), and which would have
much the same effect on the Tiyahah as the performances of the howling dervishes
have upon an American tourist.</p>

<hr />

<p>Sir Lewis Pelly has published, in two handsome volumes, a literal translation of the
text of the <i>Miracle Play of Hasan and Husein</i> (London: W. H. Allen &amp; Co., 1879), as
performed throughout India and Persia during the month of Mohurram, by the Shiah
Mohammedans. The progress of Islam in its early days was so rapid that, in a short
time, it had overwhelmed Persia, Egypt, Syria, and a large portion of the rest of the
Byzantine Empire in its tide of conquest. The death of Mohammed naturally brought
forward rival claimants to the supreme authority, and the dispute ultimately resolved
itself into one between Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, and representative
of the Hashimi clan, and Moawiyeh, the representative of the Ommayeh family,
between whom and the Hashimis an old feud existed, originating in their rival claims
to be the hereditary guardians of the Kaabeh Temple at Mecca. These two parties
offered an obvious rallying point for the two opposing factions in El Islam, the conquered
Persians and the conquering Arabs, the former of whom resisted the traditional
ceremonial law with which their Semitic co-religionists would have trammelled
them. The consequence was that the Aryan faction rallied round Ali, and the
Arabs round Moawiyeh. The latter proved the stronger party, and were known as
Sunnis, followers of the Sunnah or traditional law, while the adherents of the
former were designated Shiahs or Sectarians, and thus originated the first great
schism in Mohammedanism. The struggles of Ali’s party for supremacy, his own
murder, and the subsequent massacre of his sons, Hasan and Husein, who lost their
lives under circumstances of peculiar atrocity, are the incidents on which the drama
is founded, and the memory of which has kept alive the rancorous ill-feeling between
the two sects. In the play itself the historical element is largely mixed with the
marvellous and legendary, and the dramatic unities are wholly neglected; but it
nevertheless exhibits enough of the real facts to give it an intense living interest,
while the antiquated language and strange incidents that are introduced carry us
back to the remotest times. An admirable introduction contains a notice by Dr.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span>
Birdwood, C.S.I., of the origin of the Shiah schism, and of the ceremonies with
which the Mohurram festival is celebrated throughout India and Persia; and Mr.
A. N. Wollaston, of the India Office, has both edited the text and illustrated it with
some concise and appropriate notes.</p>

<hr />

<p>Dr. Charles Riew has just issued the first volume of his <i>Catalogue of the Persian
MSS. in the British Museum</i> (London: 1879), containing Christian and Mohammedan
Theology, and the works on History and Geography of which the Museum
has a large and important collection. Amongst these are the <i>Jámi ut tawárikh</i>,
written in the seventh—eighth centuries of the Hejra, and comprising the histories
of all the principal Turkish and Mongol dynasties; the <i>Táríkh i Rashídí</i>, a history
of the Khans of Mogolistan and of the Amirs of Kashgar; and the <i>Zafar Namah</i>,
the earliest authentic history of Timur, written by his order in 1404 <span class="smcap lowercase">A.D.</span> A brief
but complete analysis of each manuscript is given, enabling scholars to refer at
once and without difficulty to any portion of the histories without the labour of
looking through an often voluminous manuscript. The value of such a scholar-like
production as this Catalogue is cannot be over-estimated; it has, in fact, placed
within reach of the student of history most important and authentic works, the
very existence of which was unknown except to a few Orientalists. The second
volume is already complete in MS., and will be shortly published. We shall look
forward to it with great interest, as the British Museum possesses a magnificent
collection of Persian poetical and other works.</p>

<hr />

<p>A <i>Pahlavi Dictionary</i>, by Dastur Jamaspji Minocheherji Jamasp Asana, of which
the first two volumes have just appeared (London: Trübner and Co., 1879), supplies
a want long felt by students of the old Persian speech. Pahlavi is the name applied
to the old Persian tongue, and more particularly to that phase of it which was
spoken during the reigns of the Sassanian kings. It is of great interest to the
philologist, inasmuch as it contains a large admixture of Semitic words, derived, however,
from a different source than the Arabic element in modern Persian, and appears
to be akin to the Assyrian. It is sometimes called <i>Huzvaresh</i>, though this word
seems to be more properly applied to a particular method of reading, by which, when
a Semitic word occurs in the text, the priest <i>reads</i> the Aryan equivalent, just as
we in English say “pounds, shillings, and pence” when we meet with the signs
£ s. d., and <i>read</i> “namely,” though we write and print “videlicet” or “viz.” Dastur
Jamaspji Asana interprets the word <i>Huzvaresh</i> to mean the “language of Assyria,”
a suggestion which, if correct, throws some light on the origin of the language. The
etymology of the word Pahlavi has been the subject of much discussion, but the
latest as well as the most reasonable conjecture is that of Dr. Haug (followed by the
author of this Dictionary), that it is identical with <i>Parthva</i>, the Parthia of the
classical writers; that most warlike and important nation having given its name to
the language, just as the province of Pars has given the name to the language of
modern Iran. The great difficulty in compiling such a dictionary as the present,
apart from the unsatisfactory nature of the available texts, is that the alphabet is
so very vague and confused. The language contains a very great number of sounds
which the alphabet, borrowed from the Semitic, is incapable of expressing; the same
letter, therefore, is often used for different sounds, and combinations of the various
letters again often express simple sounds. This makes the arrangement very difficult,
but the author of this work has adopted the only safe method, that of arranging the
words according to the alphabetical order of the letters rather than in order of
sounds. A table, in which the various combinations of the letters are explained, also
much simplifies reference. The author has in all cases followed the traditional
reading and interpretation of words, leaving to the more critical scholars of Europe
the task of investigating them from a scientific point of view.</p>

<hr />

<p>Dr. Haug’s <i>Essays on the Sacred Language, Writings, and Religion of the
Parsis</i> (Trübner’s Oriental Series, 1878) is another most important contribution
to comparative theology and philology. The nature of the doctrines of Zoroaster
and the rites and ceremonies of the Magians had for centuries exercised the uninitiated.
The earliest mention of them occurs in the Prophet Jeremiah (xxxix. 3),
who speaks of the <i>rab mag</i> (chief of the Magi) as forming part of the retinue of
Nebuchadnezzar at his entry into Jerusalem; Ezekiel calls the Persian king Cyrus
(who professed the religion of the Magi) the “anointed of the Lord;” the New Testament
speaks of Magi from the East—translated “wise men” in our version—as the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span>
first to pay homage to our Lord; and the old Persian language has supplied,
through the New Testament also, the name Paradise, which is universally employed
to represent heaven throughout the civilized world. Herodotus also mentions them,
and testifies to the purity of their worship and their morals, and other Greek as well
as Latin writers have treated at more or less length on the subject of the Magi.
But these scattered and incomplete notices were all that scholars had until Hyde, the
celebrated Oxford scholar, in 1700, collected all the ancient sources of information
into a volume <i>Historia religionis veterum Persarum eorumque Magorum</i>. The
original texts of the Zend Avesta, &amp;c., however, of which some manuscripts had been
brought to Europe, were still sealed books, and the Parsi priests in India and Persia
strictly refrained from affording any information upon their contents. At length, in
1754, Anquetil Duperron, an enterprising Frenchman, undertook a journey to India
with the express intention of procuring manuscripts and learning the Zend language,
in both of which purposes he succeeded, and published ten years later the first known
translation of the Zend Avesta. His work was by many scholars, Sir William Jones
and Richardson, the Persian lexicographer, amongst the number, regarded as worthless,
Richardson maintaining that the texts themselves were forgeries, while Sir William
Jones endeavoured to prove that Anquetil had been the victim of priestly fraud and
deception. Nearly a century later Eugene Burnouf, an eminent French Sanscrit
scholar, proved his countryman’s work to be genuine, corrected many of his faults,
and placed the study on a sounder scientific basis. Others, especially German and
Scandinavian <i>savants</i>, followed in the same path, forming, however, different schools
of interpretation, until at last Dr. Martin Haug brought order into the confusion,
and succeeded in bringing the study of Zend within the limits of exact philological
science. The foundation of all these studies must of course necessarily be the
traditional interpretation handed down by the Parsi priests, but this would have
been comparatively useless without the investigation of European scholars. Many
of the Avesta texts are furnished with Pahlavi translations and comments, but the
Pahlavi itself was but imperfectly understood, and the whole subject was for a long
time in hopeless confusion; the reader may, however, take up Dr. Haug’s Essays
with the full assurance that he has the most trustworthy account of the Parsis, their
Scriptures, history, and religious rites, that can be now ascertained. Anything like
a <i>résumé</i> of such a work would be out of place here, but we can cordially recommend
it as, with all its recondite erudition, a most readable book.</p>

<p>Mr. Bernard Quaritch, of Piccadilly, has published a romance in modern Arabic,
entitled, <i>The Autobiography of the Constantinople Story-teller</i>, edited by Mr. J.
Catafago, a well-known Arabic scholar, and said to be the work of an Englishman,
Colonel Rous. It is principally as a curiosity of literature that it will be read, as it
does not narrate any very novel or original adventures, and the style is very simple
and unpretending. It, however, contains some clear and concise descriptions of many
localities in the East which are but little known to the ordinary reader, and will be
welcome to the student of Arabic as an easy text-book of the language.</p>

<hr />

<p>Professor James Sanua, late of Cairo, is an enthusiastic politician and an original
satirist. We have just received thirty numbers of an Arabic comic paper, written,
illustrated, and published by him in Paris, and directed against the ex-Khedive of
Egypt, whose misgovernment he mercilessly exposes, and whose deposition it was
his avowed object to bring about. The editor, a native of Egypt, and a Copt by
religion, was for many years engaged in tuition in some of the highest families of
Cairo. Possessing a keen sense of humour and a great mastery over the Arabic
language, he used to pass his evenings in improvising a sort of dramatic
entertainment, in which he himself sustained all the characters, and in which
he satirized the social foibles of his fellow-countrymen. The originality of his
<i>séances</i> soon attracted large audiences, and amongst the visitors and admirers were
the Khedive and the princes of his family. The opportunity was too good to be
lost, and Professor Sanua passed from mere social topics, and administered sound
and severe castigations to his august visitor for his misgovernment and oppression
of the fellaheen. This boldness drew down upon him the displeasure of Ismail
Pasha, and Abu Naddára Zerka (the Father of Blue Spectacles), as he was nicknamed,
found it convenient to withdraw to Paris, where he published his paper. It
is written for the most part in the vulgar Egyptian dialect, and contains articles
upon, and illustrations of, the principal events of the latter part of the reign of
the deposed prince. The pictures, which are rude, but full of force, are explained in
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span>
a French introduction, which is prefixed to the collected thirty numbers, and form a
very interesting and curious record of modern Egyptian history.</p>

<hr />

<p>A new paper, literary and political, has just been advertised at Constantinople.
It is to be written in the Arabic language, and edited by M. G. Dellal, a native of
Aleppo, and an accomplished Arabic scholar and poet. Modern Arabic literature is
exceedingly plentiful at the present time, and Beyrout has long been a centre of
activity. Sheikh Nasyf el Yazji, who died some few years ago, gave a great impulse
to the study of Arabic by his “Majma‘ el Bahrain,” a book in imitation of the
“Macamat” of Harírí, and containing in a small compass more information on the
Arabs of the classical period, their customs, histories, proverbs, &amp;c., than perhaps
any other work. Dr. Butrus Bustani, of the same town, earned for himself a lasting
name by his Arabic lexicon, “Muhít el Muhít,” which has not only a native but a
European reputation; and the same eminent scholar has established a press, from
which have emanated many standard Arabic works, and numerous translations of
valuable European works on science and history. A magazine entitled <i>El Jinán</i>,
“The Garden of Paradise,” is also published there fortnightly, and contains, besides
political articles and general news, a great deal of interesting miscellaneous information.
The last important publication of the “Matba‘ al Maarif,” or “Scientific
Press,” as it is called, is an Encyclopædia in the Arabic language, on the plan of
the European Conversation-lexicons.</p>

<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>

<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_105" id="Footnote_105"></a><a href="#FNanchor_105"><span class="label">[105]</span></a>
The Sixth was never heard of after the massacre of its officers; a dozen men were
enough for that work, and there are those still living who believe that the per-centage of
traitors in its ranks was small. At Benares, too, the mess-guard held the mess-premises
against all comers till the station was quiet, and then through sheer terror marched off without
plunder.</p></div>
</div>

<hr />
<h3>II.—CLASSICAL LITERATURE.</h3>

<p class="center">(<i>Under the Direction of the</i> Rev. Prebendary <span class="smcap">J. Davies</span>, M.A.)</p>

<p>One of the most useful volumes for classical students which has seen the light
this year is the solid collection of <i>Specimens of Roman Literature, illustrative
of Roman Thought and Style</i>, edited by Messrs. Cruttwell and Banton, of
Bradfield College, and published by C. Griffin and Co. Mr. Cruttwell is creditably
known for his compendious History of Roman Literature, and it is a happy afterthought
of himself and his composition-master to supplement that manual by the
present collection of extracts from Latin prose and poetry, designed as models for
composition, samples to be learnt by rote, and exercises in unseen translation. The
work contains above 900 passages, illustrative (1) of Roman thought in the fields of
religion, philosophy, art, and letters; and (2) of Roman style, from the earliest date
to the times of the Antonines. Edited of necessity, by reason of their bulk, sans note
or comment, these selections are availably grouped in a preliminary synopsis, happily
headed with descriptive and apposite English titles, and further adapted to English
reference by an index of authors classed in their periods, and another of subjects and
titles of passages. It is hard to conceive a completer or handier repertory of
specimens of Latin thought and style, and it is but fair to add that no small
proportion of the contents is comparatively novel and unhackneyed, a boon at the
same time to the exhausted composition tutor and to the acquisition-seeking,
wideawake pupil. For example, among descriptions selected in illustration of style,
we come upon passages from Ennius, Pacuvius, and Accius, preserved in Cicero’s De
Divinatione and De Naturâ Deorum, followed by epigrams of those elder poets,
Valerius Œdituus, Porcius Licinus, and Quintus Lutatius Catulus, embalmed in the
antiquarian pages of Aulus Gellius. The literature of Roman agriculture is represented
(§§ 31-4) by specimens of Varro de Re Rusticâ, directing how to choose the
best oxen for draught, or slaves for farm work; how to make a duck-pond, or prepare
a snail-bed; as well as of Columella and, of course, Virgil. Pliny’s natural history is
taxed largely for characteristic contributions: the letters of his nephew, as well as
of Seneca and Cicero, for epistolary style, as well as for philosophy, religious views,
and the like. Lucretius and Catullus are excellently represented: as in the field of
Roman drama are Plautus and Terence, with fragments of elder playwrights. Nor
is scant justice done to the purely Roman field of satire, as is seen in apt
extracts from Horace, Juvenal, and Persius, whilst a happy selection is made of
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span>
producible specimens of Petronius. Even Roman parody is not overlooked, nor yet
an insight into Roman gastronomy. In fact, we know not where to turn for defaults
in the presence of such assiduous and various compilations. Here and there may be
detected careless printers’ errors, such as <i>Tar</i> for <i>Ter</i>. (the abbreviation of Terence);
and it would have been neater to head the hortatory or suasory orations, illustrated
in pp. 567-8, §§ 73-5, with an English title, rather than to describe each in mingled
and maimed speech as “a suasoria” (<i>i.e.</i>, “suasoria oratio.”) But the work is so
calculated to be useful to scholars and editors that we must trust its value will be
enhanced in future editions by the most careful revision.</p>

<hr />

<p>A volume of somewhat kindred use and purpose, though of additional value as
suggestive of a standard of translation indisputably sound and high, is the collection of
<i>Translations</i>, by Professor Jebb, Mr. Jackson, and Mr. Currey, of Trinity, Cambridge,
published by Deighton, Bell, &amp; Co., Cambridge, and George Bell &amp; Sons, London,
just a year ago. Its usefulness is enhanced by a fourfold applicability to the wants
of translators into Greek and Latin, and out of those languages into English,
whether in prose or poetry. The samples are, of course, limited considerably by the
area of the field they cover, but they will be admitted to be amply sufficient for
models and patterns, and no tiro, or even advanced student, can fail to be benefited
by the variety, excellent choice, scholarly handling, brief but seasonable annotation,
and general accommodation to student-use, of the selections which form the four
divisions of this practical manual. The rule of “Ne quid nimis” has been sufficiently
respected to forbid tedious reiteration of types of the same style, so that in Greek
verse into English only three examples of Theocritus occur, one a sweet piece of
idyllic description, a second illustrative of the mimes of Sophron, a third breathing
the Alexandrian tone of poetic stimulus to the halting liberality of the would-be
literary Ptolemies. The proportion of extracts from Homer and the dramatists is
scarcely larger, and rather guides the reader to form a criterion of style for himself
than helps him to be armed beforehand for passages which may be set in this or that
examination. In translation the canon of accuracy and fidelity is tendered in
preference to that of liveliness and effect, though it cannot be said that Messrs. Jebb
and Jackson’s translations from Plautus and Terence, or those of Jebb and Currey
from Martial, Juvenal, and Ausonius, are deficient in the life and spirit suggested by
the originals. As much may be said without controversy for the prose models in
either language; nor is it to be lightly regarded that the aim of the editors has
been to help classical students to train themselves in preparation for examination.
Not to be prolix in notice of a volume which may be referred to again and
again in our examination of texts and school-books to follow in our chronicle, it may
be admissible to quote in Latin and English some six lines of Professor Jebb’s translation
from the Phormio (pp. 140-1) as a type of the neatness and spirit of the average of
these translations. Phormio is explaining how, with all his ebullitions, he has never
been indicted for assault:—</p>

<div class="poem">
<span class="i0">“Quia non rete accipitri tenditur neque miluo,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Qui male faciunt nobis: illis qui nihil faciunt tenditur;<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Quia enim in illis fructus est, in illis opera luditur.<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Aliis aliunde est periclum unde aliquid abradi potest:<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Mihi sciunt nihil esse. Dices, ducent damnatum domum:<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Alere nolunt hominem edacem: et sapiunt, meâ quidem sententia,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Pro maleficio si beneficium summum nolunt reddere.”—<i>Phorm.</i>, act. ii. 2.<br /></span>
</div>

<p>“Because we do not spread nets for hawks and kites that do us harm; the net
is spread for the harmless birds. The fact is, pigeons may be plucked: hawks and
kites mock our pains. Various dangers beset people who can be pilfered—I am
known to have nothing. You will say, ‘They will get a writ of <i>habeas corpus</i>.’
They would rather not keep a large eater: and I certainly think they are right to
decline requiting a bad turn with a signal favour.”</p>

<hr />

<p>From a summary notice of these two volumes of wider range and scope, it is an easy
leap to such noteworthy classical translations and texts of the year or season as lie on
our table for review. Of the former we note with satisfaction a new and very readable
version of <i>The Letters of the Younger Pliny</i>, literally translated by John Delaware
Lewis, M.A. (London: Trubner &amp; Co., 1879), whose version of Juvenal’s Satires some
years back was accurate, lively, and well-achieved. In approaching another
author of the silver age, well deserving of a more modern English transcript than
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span>
those of Melmoth and Lord Orrery, Mr. Lewis has been minded to present this
pleasantest of gossips, and most cultured of letter-writers, in a guise as little as
possible encumbered with notes or excursions, and in such wise that the volume is
admirably adapted for the library table, whether the object be comparison with the
Latin text, or refreshment of the memory, anent this or that sentiment of the
many-sided and voluminous man of law and letters. Under the conviction that enough
has been done to present Pliny himself to his readers in the volumes by Church and
Brodribb (in the Ancient Classics), and by Pritchard and Bernard, as well as the
notices of life and letters by W. S. Teuffel and English bibliographers, Mr. Lewis has
confined himself to the briefest of introductions, and been content to bestow most
pains on apt and parallel English counterparts to the expressions and idioms of the
Latin. Thus the task undertaken has been made to assume an easy, unaffected
form, at the same time that it is calculated to stand close examination by the criterion
of the Latin text. A good specimen both of the gossiping author and his latest
translator might be cited from Book II. 6 to Avitus, in which is described the triple-graded
dinner given by a shabby, purse-proud host (<span class="greek" title="a">α</span>) to himself and his intimates,
(<span class="greek" title="b">β</span>) to his lesser friends,
(<span class="greek" title="g">γ</span>) to his freedmen at the same board, but of fare graduated
according to degree. Pliny tells his correspondent that he demurred to this procedure
to his next neighbour at table, and propounded his own practice on this wise: “I invite
people to dine, not to be invidiously ticketed, and I treat as my entire equals in
all respects those whom I have already made my equals by inviting them at my
table.” And this equality, for the time being, he extended to his freedmen, on the
sensible point of view that they were then his guests, not his freedmen. In the
same book (letter 15) occurs a letter of Pliny to Valerianus, brief enough for quotation,
and yet expressing with lively brevity more than one home truth for those who
realize Horace’s sketch, “O si angulus iste proximus accedat.” “How,” he asks,
“does your old Marsian property treat you? And your new purchase? Are you
pleased with the estate now that it is your own? Indeed, nothing is so agreeable
when you have once got it, as it was when you longed to have it. As for me, the
farms which I inherited from my mother treat me but so-so: yet they delight
me as coming from my mother; and besides, long endurance has hardened me:
constant growling comes to this at last, that one is ashamed to growl.” Next but
one to this letter comes one of those charming descriptions which are, <i>par excellence</i>,
Pliny’s <i>chefs d’œuvre</i>, minutely detailing the features and attractions of his
villas. These constitute to the young student so many <i>loci classici</i>, by no means to
be overlooked in preparation for facing the test-paper of a scholarship examination,
and it is sound counsel to candidates for such to avail themselves of a translation
like Mr. Lewis’s for general purposes, taking such letters as the one alluded to
(II. xvii.) for special study and comparison with its original. Here, as elsewhere,
Mr. Lewis adds pertinent and sensible notelets in cases of difficulty; but it is only
fair to say <i>à propos</i> of the, as he would seem to imply in his preface, long-since
shelved translation of Melmoth, that in Bohn’s Classical Library (George Bell &amp;
Sons) will be found a revision and correction of <i>The Letters of Caius Plinius
Cœcilius Secundus</i>, as translated by Melmoth, annotated and otherwise accommodated
to modern reading by the Rev. F. C. T. Bosanquet, B.A., of Gonville and Caius
College, Cambridge, which will be found in all respects excellently suited for the
need of the current reader. Whilst here and there the style of Melmoth strikes us
as forgetting itself for a brief space, where the modern editor has felt bound to interpose
a more literal rendering, and in such cases it is simpler to refer to the uniform
translation of Lewis, it is certainly a real boon to have the notes of Bosanquet’s
Melmoth’s Pliny to consult, whether they represent the explanatory and illustrative
labour of Melmoth, and his literary or antiquarian contemporaries, or the careful
supplementary illustrations of his accommodator to modern eyes. So much
explanation is due to one of the best recent volumes of Bohn’s Classical Series
(1878).</p>

<hr />

<p>The feeling is more mixed with which we touch upon Mr. T. Hart Davies’s <i>Translation
of Catullus into English Verse</i> (London: C. Kegan Paul &amp; Co., 1879), the author
of which is a quondam Oxonian in the Indian Civil Service. Fully persuaded that
Catullus is very untranslatable, and that the subtle charm of his dainty versification
evaporates, it is evidence alike of Mr. Hart Davies’s courage and culture that, afar
from classical libraries, he has recreated his mind and tastes with the reproduction
of one of the most genuine classical poets; given us anew the touching songs to
Lesbia, and the unequalled nuptial songs (lxi. and lxii.); and rendered with more or less
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span>
success the pictorial epic, in petto, of the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, and the
pathetic allusions to an early-lost brother in the poem to Hortalus. He deserves,
too, the praise of having read carefully the recent literature of the subject, and
guaged with creditable acuteness and discrimination the lucubrations of Professor
R. Ellis, the criticisms of Mr. Munro, and the critical essays of Schwabe, Heyse, and
Couat. He hesitates, however, it would seem, to accept Munro’s well-sustained
rehabilitation of Cæsar and Mamurra (<i>à propos</i> of Poem xxix. on Cæsar), and in
two or three passages seems to us to err in point of prolixity, which is as foreign as
can be conceived to the style of his original, as well as, in one or two places, in
misconception of his sense. In either aspect, he cannot be regarded as competing
(which indeed he does not aspire to do) with Theodore Martin: but we cannot
honestly say that we regard his version of the Atys as an improvement in readableness
on that of one of the ablest of critics, but most puzzling and hopeless of verse-translators,
Professor Robinson Ellis. Indeed, it is a question whether he has imported
any improvement into the rendering of his Galliambics by adopting the Tennysonian
rather than the Catullian rhythm and measure. Mr. Hart Davies is mostly happy
in his shorter versions. The invitation to Cæcilius is bright and brisk (p. 33): there
is a touching sadness in the lines to Cornificius (p. 35). The stanzas to the poet’s
self on the “Coming of Spring” (p. 43) breathe much of the tiptoe of expectation and
love of adventure infused into the original lines. And as a neat sample of the
translator’s muse may be quoted the transcript of the “Lines to Sirmio,” adequately
executed, and endorsed with some of the original pathos and picturesqueness—</p>

<div class="poem">
<span class="i0">“Sirmio, fairest of all isles that be,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Or all peninsulas that ocean laves,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Whether around them roll the mighty sea,<br /></span>
<span class="i2">Or a lake’s placid waves.<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Thee with what joy, what rapture do I view,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Returned from Thynia and Bithynia’s plain!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">I scarce can credit that the bliss is true<br /></span>
<span class="i2">Thee to behold again.<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Oh! what more blessed is than labours past!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">In weary wanderings abroad we roam,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Then spent with toil we come again at last,<br /></span>
<span class="i2">Seeking our rest at home.<br /></span>
<span class="i0">This for our toils the sole reward is found,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">Hail, lovely Sirmio, and thou Lydian mere!<br /></span>
<span class="i0">And now, my home, let all thy laughter sound,<br /></span>
<span class="i2">Now is thy master here.”<br /></span>
</div>

<p>Mr. Hart Davies’s temporary exile has obviously the solace of scholarship.</p>

<hr />

<p>If a wide divergence from the beaten track into fresh fields and pastures new be a
merit, as it must be to jaded schoolmasters, if not to school-boys, some praise should
be accorded to Mr. Heitland, a Fellow and Lecturer of St. John’s, Cambridge, and his
coadjutor, Mr. Raven, for having furnished the Pitt Press Series with so good an
edition of that part of the <i>History of Quintus Curtius</i>, which relates to the Indian
expedition of Alexander the Great. The subject, author, and hero are to modern
readers novel and unhackneyed: and there is that suspicion of imperfect knowledge
attaching to all three which sets the mind on the qui vive to acquire what is
knowable about them. For such an undertaking no better guides could be needed.
An introduction primes the student with the needful information (<span class="greek" title="a">α</span>) as to Curtius
and his book; (<span class="greek" title="b">β</span>) as to Alexander’s career; while Appendix D (187-9) supplements
from Mr. Talboy Wheeler’s “History of India from the Earliest Ages” the
general and current information as to the plan of his Indian campaign. Anent
the date and authorship of Curtius’s history, it is shown to be the work of
Q. Curtius Rufus, a rhetorician of the reign of Claudius, and referable to the silver
age of Latin literature. His transparent imitation of Livy has suggested the
not improbable supposition that he may have been even that historian’s pupil,
nor is it an impertinent criticism of the editors’ that in common with that master
Curtius seems to ignore the “high aims and farsightedness which give its
grandeur to Alexander’s character.” The string of notable usages in Curtius’s style,
given in pp. 14-15, exhibits more than one palpable Livianism; and the use of poetical
language bespeaks his attentive study of Virgil. Tiros will be comforted by hearing
that “if Curtius is less pleasant to read than Livy, he is also less difficult.” The criticisms
of the editors on the grounds of his historical value at the revival period are interesting
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span>
and perspicuous, and the special interest of the particular portion of history
adopted as a specimen of the author needs no apology in a country where the reigning
sovereign has the collateral title of Empress of India. Six chapters of the eighth
Book bring the reader through the country west of the Indus to the bank of that
river, its passage, and the ensuing battle on the eastern bank, with the defeat of the
army of Porus; whilst the ninth Book embraces Alexander’s advance through the
Punjab, his operations in descending the Jhelam and Chenab, his descent of the
Indus, and exploration of its mouth, with an account also of the homeward march;
and the least that can be said of Messrs. Heitland and Raven’s editorial work,
whether critical or explanatory, is, that no difficulty of text is overlooked or imperfectly
handled, no discrepancy, as comparing Curtius with parallel authorities,
ignored. A test-passage, wherein to prove this statement, may be taken in the fourteenth
chapter of the eighth Book, the battle between Alexander and Porus, which is
described with unflagging care and zeal from first to last, the situations and details
being compared, and, where possible, reconciled with Arrian, the poetical phrases
characteristic of Curtius pointed out and illustrated, and the unusual words, <i>e.g.,
copidas</i> (“choppers” like a Goorka knife, the <span class="greek" title="kopis">κοπὶς</span>
from the same root as <span class="greek" title="koptô">κόπτω</span>),
clearly though succinctly explained. On Alexander’s order to Cœnus in §§ 15 of
the battle chapter, “ipse dextrum move et turbatis signa infer” (advance the right
wing, &amp;c.), an excellent note, for which Mr. Heitland undertakes the sole responsibility,
accredits him, in our judgment, as a most sound historical commentator, by
the exhaustiveness wherewith he reconciles Arrian and Curtius’s view of Alexander’s
position and movements, and those of Cœnus. The former with the main body took
the Indian horse in flank, before they could change their front, and enabled Cœnus
to fall on what had been their front but was now their disordered flank: and as to
the difficulty in the way of this explanation, that according to Arrian the war-chariots
were in front of the Indian horse, it is justly deemed easier to conceive Cœnus eluding
these clumsy adversaries, than Alexander expecting him to see from the Macedonian left
the right moment for his own charge, and then wheel round the whole Indian army,
and execute his orders opportunely. With the same lucidity is the whole narrative
commented on: and every geographical, historical, or military difficulty investigated,
with a commendable eye both to ancient and modern references and authorities.
Equally interesting, too, will be found the elucidations of questions of style, such as in
viii. §§ 10, where “igni <i>alita</i> sepulchra” reveals a certainly post-Augustan but doubtfully
Ciceronian form; or as in viii. 14 §§ 41 the use of “malum” (plague take you)
borrowed interjectionally from the comic poets and, as is shown in the notes ad loc.,
from Cicero De Off. ii. §§ 53. Students, however, must search this volume minutely to
understand aright the helps it affords to their just estimate of Quintus Curtius
Rufus as a rhetorical moralist and historian, worthy of perusal in the wake of Livy
and of Seneca. Maps, indices, and list of names, are given, which will be found of
service.</p>

<hr />

<p>For our next topic of criticism recourse must be had to Ciceronian Latin, and to
the famous speech of Rome’s greatest orator, which is generally reckoned the first of
his public and political orations. Called in the MSS. the speech “De imperio Gnæi
Pompeii” “apud Quirites” it is better known as the oration <i>pro lege Maniliâ</i>, and
because there is no compendious school edition of this speech, apart from others of
the same orator in the hands of English school-boys, Professor Wilkins, of Owens
College, has judiciously undertaken to prepare an edition of it, with the cognizance,
sanction, and assistance of Karl Halm, of Munich, and his smaller edition for
English students. The English professor’s name is a sufficient earnest of his work’s
thoroughness, and though it might be matter of doubt whether his historical
introduction of over forty pages is not unnecessarily circumstantial (we note
that in Chambers’ preface to the same oration in the “Ciceronis Selectæ Orationes,”
1849, of their Educational Course, it is limited to two), it must be admitted that
a complete preliminary summary has the result of shortening afterwork by admitting
of copious references to it in the notes in place of explanation. Such is certainly the
case with Mr. Wilkins’s present task (<i>M. Tullii Ciceronis De Imperio Gnœi Pompeii
Oratio ad Quirites</i>, by A. S. Wilkins, M.A., Professor of Latin in the Owens College,
Manchester. London: Macmillan &amp; Co., 1879), where the introduction traces consecutively
the career and campaigns and varying fortunes of Mithridates, during over
twenty years, through his struggles with Lucullus, and his easy resistance to Acilius
Glabrio, down to the period when the tribune Manilius proposed a Bill to commit the
conduct and consummation of the war to the then favourite of fortune, Pompey the
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span>
Great. Against this Bill were arrayed the Moderate Republicans, and the talents of
the orator Hortensius, whilst on behalf of it spoke Julius Cæsar, either with an eye
to a future precedent in his own case, or perhaps to create a reaction. It is probable,
however, that the masterly eloquence of Cicero in defence of the Bill, and his exhaustive
demonstration of Pompey’s fitness for the supreme command against Mithridates,
were the causes of the general and irresistible acceptance of the Manilian proposal.
As Mr. Wilkins notes at the close of his introduction, this speech contains the best
example from antiquity of the regular arrangement of a speech of the deliberate
class, while the third section of the argument presents a model of demonstrative
oratory scarcely paralleled in the days of the Republic, except in the funeral
orations. As has been already remarked, the fulness of Professor Wilkins’s introduction
tends to disencumber his commentary and its notes of digressive and indirect
matter; and the result is highly favourable to the due mastery of the sense and gist
of the oration by the patient student. Every passage has its critical difficulties
explained; every uncommon construction or use of a word is noted; every antithesis
is pointed out by the observant editor. In the first class may be instanced the use
in c. ii. of <i>vectigalibus</i> in the masculine gender for <i>tributaries</i>, which has its parallel
in § 45; in the third the contrast in c. iii., between “In Asiæ luce h.e,” “in the foreground
of Asia,” <i>lux</i> being used of what is present to the eyes of all, and
open to extensive commerce, as opposed to “<i>Ponti latebris</i>,” as the hiding-place of
Mithridates is termed just before. In the same chapter there is an antithesis, as is well
shown in the description of past generals having carried off <i>insignia victoriæ, non
victoriam</i>, “only triumphs, not a victory;” and as a sample of other notes dealing
with fiscal duties and such like, we may notice those in c. vi., on “ubertate agrorum”
“magnitudine pastionis,” and the sources of revenue farmed by the “publicani.”
In the same passage <i>scriptura</i> is the “rent for pasturage,” and <i>custodiis</i> (§ 16) = “coastguard
posts, to prevent vessel unloading unless at the emporia where there
were custom-houses.” For <i>publicanis omissis</i>, a despaired-of reading in c. vii. § 18,
the editor adopts the conjecture <i>publicanorum bonis</i> or <i>fortunis amissis</i>; and indeed
seldom fails in the likeliest cure for a corrupt word or text. Incidentally he is rich
in rules for orthography, as where on “tot milibus” he cites Lachmann (Lucret. i. 313)
for the use of the single <i>l</i> where a long <i>i</i> is followed by a short one in the next syllable;
nor does he fail to note any memorable change of construction, <i>e.g.</i>, where in
c. xiii. in the sentence, “<i>Hiemis</i> enim non <i>avaritiæ</i> perfagium majores nostri in sociorum
atque amicorum tectis esse voluerunt,” we have a change from the objective to the
subjective genitive, “a refuge <i>from</i> the winter, not <i>for</i> avarice.” But enough has
been said to signify the merit of this handbook; and we must deal more briefly with
such other Latin volumes as are still on our list.</p>

<hr />

<p>Among these perhaps Mr. Reid’s Lælius (<i>M. Tullii Ciceronis Lælius de Amicitia</i>,
by James S. Reid, M.L.: Cambridge University Press, 1879) is the most
notable, an edition based mainly on Seyffert’s elaborate edition, yet evidently
strengthened by seasonable comparison with the best German editions. Mr. Reid
disowns acquaintance with any English edition of the Lælius, having only heard of
that of Mr. Arthur Sidgwick, when his own was far advanced through the press. The
object and purpose of the edition is twofold, viz. (1) elucidation of the subject-matter
and comparison of the editor’s own conclusions touching it with those of other
editing scholars; and (2) a thorough elucidation of the Latinity of the dialogue, a task
to which all who are cognizant of his edition of Cicero’s speeches for Archias and for
Balbus will admit his eminent fitness. A fourfold introduction summarises the salient
points of Cicero, as a writer of philosophy; the scope of this treatise on “Friendship:”
the structure, personages, and other circumstances of the dialogue, and a quasi-dramatic
analysis of the same. It will be found that Cicero, whilst having no sympathy with the
Epicurean philosophy of his day, sided mainly with the Peripatetics, though inclining
in a few points of detail to the Stoics. An instructive disquisition on the sources
of the dialogue opens out various clues to inquiring students, and suggests particularly
minuter testing of the question how far Cicero directly imitated Plato’s
Lysis, which is perhaps more probable than that he used for it the Nicomachean
Ethics, although, in form, beyond a doubt the Lælius is more Aristotelian than
Platonic. The “mitis sapientia Læli” in the dialogue stands out in contrast with
the genial learning of Mucius Scævola and the severer cultivation of Gaius Fannius.
An interesting passage in the dialogue is that in which Lælius states a question
relating to friendship, in which he was to some extent at issue with Scipio, viz.,
the difficulty of friendship enduring a whole lifetime. Scipio held the negative view,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span>
and Lælius demurred to it, and in c. x., xi., &amp;c., the occurrences which tend to
break off friendship are enumerated. In the tenth chapter are to be found two or
three very apt elucidations of the text, such as that on the construction of “contentione
condicionis,” and the sense of condicio (not “conditio”) in § 34, but one
note (16) on “optimis quibusque” stands out as a sample of exhaustive criticism.
The argument of Lælius is that there is no greater curse in friendships than, in the
run of men, the desire of money; in the best, the desire of honour and glory: “in
optimis quibusque honoris certamen et gloria.” Let us see how Mr. Reid examines
this last clause, which he compares with the sentiment, “optimus quisque gloria
maxime ducitur,” in the oration for Archias. The best authors, it is shown, use
only the <i>neuter</i> plural of <i>quisque</i>, and that with a superlative; Cic. Fam. vii. 33,
where we have “literas longissimas quasque,” being exceptional, because literæ, “an
epistle,” has no singular. Mr. Reid instances, indeed, from the De Officiis ii. 75,
“Leges et proximæ quæque duriores,” but only to propose an emendation to a senseless
reading, viz., “Leges, et proxima quæque”—<i>i.e.</i>, “laws, and harsher each of
them than its predecessor.” In the present case, he adds, “quibusque” may be used
for <span class="greek" title="hekastois">ἑκάστοις</span> in the sense of “each set of people,” or the plural may be due merely
to assimilation with “plerisque.” In a note on the difficult passage, p. 41, “et minime
tum quidem Gaius frater, nunc idem acerrimus,” Mr. Reid, rightly, it should seem,
adopts the interpretation of Madvig, Opusc., 2, 281, that <i>minime</i> qualifies <i>acer</i> to be
supplied from “acerrimus.” This sample of interpretational tact must suffice from
a copious inventory; and with reference to helpful elucidation of matter and
illustration of proper names, quotations, adagia, and what not, it need only be said
that it is in this edition always sound and seasonable.</p>

<hr />

<p>For the same employers, the Syndics of the Pitt Press, Mr. A. G. Peskett, M.A.,
of Magdalen College, has carefully edited the fourth and fifth books of Cæsar’s
Commentaries on the Gallic War, <i>Gai Juli Cæsaris De Bello Gallico Commentariorum,
IV. V.</i> (Cambridge University Press, 1879), with a helpful commentary
derived from study of German and English editors, and speculations on the topographical,
geographical, and astronomical problems involved in Cæsar’s account.
These books, it will be remembered, contain <i>inter alia</i> the description of Cæsar’s
Bridge over the Rhine, his preparations for invading Britain, his first somewhat
abortive attempts, and then, after a winter in Italy and Illyricum, his maturer
arrangements, and landing—not without damage to his fleet—on the shore of
Britain. The second of these campaigns embraces the narrative of the treachery of
Ambiorix and the utter defeat of the Romans, v. 36-7. In the fourth book, one of
the most interesting problems is the construction of Cæsar’s Rhine Bridge, c. 17;
whether Cæsar’s method of strengthening the four bearing piles with their transverse
beams was (as Kraner and Heller practically agree) by four fibulæ at each junction
of the beam with the piles (eight in all), or, as Cohausen believes, by two fibulæ at
each end, one serving instead of cross-piece c, in fig. 1, for the beam to rest upon.
Napoleon’s view of the fibulaæ, given in fig. 4, p. 63, is far less tenable, and the most
reasonable view is that of Heller. In c. 36, Book V., note, we have good examples
of the actual words of Ambiorix to Titurius, as they may be gathered from the
<i>oratio obliqua</i> in which the historian casts them. In c. 37, it should seem that the
reading <i>lapsi</i> has less likelihood, though better authority, than “elapsi,” and
Napoleon’s identification of the site of the battle is shown to be accurate, in a note
discussing the topography of Tongres, the Geer, and the village of Lowaige. From
a cursory examination of this edition of two interesting books of Cæsar’s Gallic
War we should be disposed to congratulate the young student of intelligence, into
whose hands a volume at once so helpful and so lucid may fall. There remains on
our list only one Latin volume, the third part of Professor Mayor’s Juvenal for
Schools, containing Satires X. and XI. But this, as well as a batch of recent
editions of Greek plays and Greek authors, such as Xenophon, Lucian, &amp;c., must
be postponed until another time.
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span></p>

<hr />
<h3>III.—ESSAYS, NOVELS, POETRY, &amp;c.</h3>

<p class="center">(<i>Under the Direction of</i> <span class="smcap">Matthew Browne</span>.)</p>

<p>In referring to two more of Messrs. Macmillan and Co.’s <i>English Men of Letters</i> we
shall reproduce, reckless of the charge of “damnable iteration,” the charge we have
made before. Here is <i>Burke</i>, by Mr. John Morley, and <i>Hume</i>, by Professor Huxley,
each volume containing over two hundred close pages; and most admirable volumes
they are. But let us turn again to the prospectus and note its language: “These
Short Books are addressed to the general public with a view both of stirring and satisfying
an interest in literature and its great topics in the minds of those who have to
run as they read.” This language is both wide and careful; the old metaphor may
be read more or less loosely, of course; and it may be said that those who care much
for Burke and Hume must be provided for in the series, and that the writers who
deal with them have treated their topics as pleasantly as may be. We do not deny
this, and the little volumes are substantial additions to the literature of the day.
But they are not for readers who have to run with their books in their hand.</p>

<p>Mr. John Morley’s estimate of Burke is known to us all, and it is what might be
expected. As a philosophical politician, and as a speculative writer in general,
Burke, of course, pleases Mr. Morley by the positive tendencies of his mind. We
are pleased to see that he assigns its due rank to the too often underrated Inquiry
about the Sublime and Beautiful. But Mr. Morley has perhaps the fault which
Sterne told his friend the Count belonged especially to the French; he is “too
serious.” Of course, Burke is a great man, and one must not cut jokes in a memoir
of him—at least one must not if one can’t. But it is quite certain Sydney Smith
would have done it; and there are many ways in which a page may be lit up. Well
worth notice, as an amusing touch, was that passage in the Inquiry in which Burke
speaks deprecatingly of Bunyan, because he did not write like Virgil, and though the
present work “is biographical rather than critical,” we miss a number of amusing
anecdotes. This may be the result of literary fastidiousness on Mr. Morley’s part,
but, if so, we submit that the fastidiousness is carried too far. There is a little story
that some one (we forget the name at the moment) who had lost largely by investing
in some West Indian property, alleged that he had been induced to invest by
Burke’s glowing descriptions of the country, and that Burke replied, “Ods boddikins!
must one swear to the truth of a song?”—or in very similar language. Now this is
really illustrative. We can by no means agree with Mr. Morley that Burke was free
from the vicious tendencies of the rhetorician, not to say the rhetorical Celt. He
had the Celtic leaning towards forlorn hopes, and the Celtic want of truthfulness.
Of course, the Dr. Richard Price, who is so contemptuously treated in the “Reflections,”
was a much smaller man than Burke, but he had more love of truth and more
capacity of adhering to principle in his little finger than Burke had in his whole
nature. Mr. John Morley does his friendly and ingeniously reticent best for him;
but students who reject the “positive” method (except as an auxiliary or a check) will
persist in thinking that the painful tangles of the great man’s life, and the blind alleys
and other faults of his writings, were the result of his deficiency on the side of truthfulness.
It will be doing anything but injustice to Burke, Mr. Morley, or the reader, if
we call particular attention to p. 173 and so on to p. 177 inclusive. They give a bird’s-eye
view of the most important part of the subject; they contain instructive comparisons
between Burke, Sir Thomas More, and Turgot: and they seem to us to contain
large proof in small compass of what Mr. Morley will of course not admit—namely,
Burke’s want of love for the truth, and his incapacity for abstract speculation.</p>

<p>As a reasoned account of the life and writings of the subject of the book, Professor
Huxley’s <i>Hume</i> is one of the very best of the series—we were going to pronounce it
the best, but remembered in good time that we had not seen them all. In any
case it is excellent. It does not seem to us that Hume’s “Description of the Will”
is grammatically open to the criticism on p. 181. But comment like this would be
useless unless we gave the reader an opportunity of judging. This is Hume’s
“description of the Will,” as quoted by Professor Huxley:—</p>

<div class="blockquot"><p>“Of all the immediate effects of pain and pleasure there is none more remarkable than
the <i>will</i>; and though, properly speaking, it be not comprehended among the passions, yet
as the full understanding of its nature and properties is necessary to the explanation of
them, we shall here make it the subject of our inquiry. I desire it may be observed that,
<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span>
by the <i>will</i>, I mean nothing but <i>the internal impression we feel and are conscious of, when we
knowingly give rise to any new motion of our body, or new perception of our mind</i>. This impression,
like the preceding ones of pride and humility, love and hatred, it is impossible to
define, and needless to describe any further.”—(ii. p. 150.)</p></div>

<p>And this is Professor Huxley’s comment:—</p>

<div class="blockquot"><p>“This description of a volition may be criticized on various grounds. More especially
does it seem defective in restricting the term “will” to that feeling which arises when we
act, or appear to act, as causes: for one may will to strike, without striking; or to think
of something which we have forgotten.”</p></div>

<p>But is not this met by the last six of the words which Professor Huxley has
italicised? They are certainly very wide, and one might ask, in addition, what word
of absolute “restriction” is employed by Hume in this passage? He indicates what
he means by the word “Will,” by saying that it is what we are conscious of upon
certain occasions, and this gives a clue to the quality of the sensation; but it was
obvious, and did not need saying, that the quality of the sensation might remain,
though its complete outcome were baulked.</p>

<p>In presenting and criticizing Hume’s views upon such topics as Theism, Immortality
and Miracles, Necessary Truth, &amp;c., Professor Huxley is, so far as we have
discovered, both accurate and candid. It is only necessary to suggest that the reader
should keep his eyes open—for there is really not one new word to be written upon
these matters.</p>

<p>It is not often that you are told what a man died of. You are put off with some
such phrase as “a painful malady,” or a “family complaint.” Yet, it is often just
what we desire to know, because the illness from which a man suffers stands in direct
relation to his power of work and his capacity of endurance. Consumption, except
in its later stage, is not usually painful. Nor does it necessarily make work difficult.
The same may be said of maladies which come on paroxysmally, and leave those
blessed intervals of ease of which Paley, himself a sufferer, writes with such unaccustomed
tenderness. In the <i>Gibbon</i> of this series, Mr. Morison slurred over the
very curious, perhaps unexampled fact, that Gibbon had long concealed a bad hernia
and had done nothing for it. It finally killed him, but that with his amazing
corpulence he could live a long time with a serious rupture, and keep his general
health and his placidity, is very interesting. Professor Huxley tells us point-blank
what Hume died of, and it is quite as well for biographers to be specific in such
matters. We may just inquire, in passing, where the Professor got his “<i>solid</i> certainty
of waking bliss”? It seems pedantic to notice every trifle of this sort, but if small
errors in quotation were, so to speak, nipped in the bud, many logomachics would be
saved. How much discussion, in pulpits and out of them, has been wasted upon the
supposition that Pope wrote that “an honest man’s the <i>noblest</i> work of God.”
Whereas Pope wrote “noble,” and it was Burns, in the “Cotter’s Saturday Night,”
who started the error. Now “solid” is as good sense as “sober,” but the latter is
what suits the verse best, and it is what Milton made Comus say.</p>

<hr />

<p>The “run” upon Dante continues. Here is <i>Dante: Six Sermons</i>, by Philip H.
Wicksteed, M.A. (C. Kegan Paul &amp; Co.) “In allowing,” says Mr. Wicksteed—</p>

<div class="blockquot"><p>“the publication of this little volume, my only thought is to let it take its chance with
other fugitive productions of the pulpit that appeal to the press as a means of widening the
possible area rather than extending the period over which the preacher’s voice may extend;
and my only justification is the hope that it may here and there reach hands to which no
more adequate treatment of the subject was likely to find its way.”</p></div>

<p>The sermons were delivered first at Little Portland Street Chapel, where Mr. Wicksteed
succeeded Dr. Martineau, and afterwards at the Free Christian Church at
Croydon, where the Rev. Rodolph R. Suffield formerly preached, but where the Rev.
E. M. Geldart is now (we believe) the minister. The book contains only about 160
pages, and gives a very readable and complete account both of Dante and his poetry.
The style is that of the pulpit, iterative, florid, and full of amplifications; but that
was natural. It is a serious matter, however, that the author keeps up his strain of
eulogy from end to end at a pitch which has an almost <i>falsetto</i> sound with it.
It seems hardly fair to leave unnoticed the charges of artificiality and worse which
have been abundantly made against Dante and his poetry, especially as this book is
intended for popular use; and it is a pity that Mr. Wicksteed should go out of his way
to settle difficult questions in this off-hand way:—</p>

<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span></p><div class="blockquot"><p>“It is often held and taught, that a strong and definite didactic purpose must inevitably
be fatal to the highest forms of art, must clip the wings of poetic imagination, distort the
symmetry of poetic sympathy, and substitute hard and angular contrasts for the melting
grace of those curved lines of beauty which pass one into the other. Had Dante never
lived, I know not where we should turn for the decisive refutation of this thought; but in
Dante it is the very combination said to be impossible that inspires and enthrals us. A
perfect artist guided in the exercise of his art by an unflagging intensity of moral purpose;
a prophet, submitting his inspirations”—</p></div>

<p>and so forth, in the same strained and insistent key. But no wise critic has ever
said that “a strong and definite didactic purpose must inevitably be fatal to the
highest forms of art.” What is maintained on <i>that</i> side of the debate is that the
“purpose” must not be permitted to shape the poem; that the poem itself must
be moulded upon lines of beauty and not of “moral purpose”—though the “moral
purpose” may be immanent in the work. But who is bound to take Mr. Wicksteed’s
word for the statement that Dante’s great poem is not the very strongest confirmation
in all literature of the truth that a <i>controlling</i> and <i>interfering</i> moral purpose
injures a poem, Milton’s “Paradise Lost” being the next strongest?</p>

<hr />

<p>A well-known, and also imperfectly known, “nook in the Apennines” is the
Republic of San Marino, about which there is a good deal of information in <i>A Freak
of Freedom; or, The Republic of San Marino</i>, by J. Theodore Bent (Longman,
Green &amp; Co.) It appears to be partly the record of a visit paid by the author to the
spot in 1877, and is illustrated by fifteen woodcuts from the author’s own drawings,
to say nothing of a map. Mr. Bent was presented with the freedom of the Republic,
and we do not know that any one, except another citizen of it, or some near
neighbour, could criticize his little book to much advantage. But we trust he will
permit us to remark that he might have made his work more amusing and instructive.
There is a good deal about the place in Addison, and this is referred to (among other
interesting matters) in an article in Knight’s “Penny Magazine” for May 31st, 1834.
But, though we have not time to make references, we have a strong impression that
there are many descriptions, new and old, of San Marino, which it would have been
refreshing to quote. We know, however, of no work which gives so much information
as Mr. Bent’s.</p>

<hr />

<p>It might be the subject of a very plausible doubt whether French novels of a high
order ought to be translated into English, since those who are really capable of
understanding and enjoying them will be certain to understand French, and since,
moreover, the finest qualities of the writing must disappear in the process of translation.
Then, with regard to French novels of a much lower class, they are not
worth the trouble of turning into English; are more likely in themselves to do harm
than good; and their reproduction in our language cannot tend to encourage “native
talent.” We have before us, from Messrs. Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, &amp; Rivington,
<i>The Cat and Battledore, and other Tales</i>, by Honoré de Balzac, translated into
English by Philip Kent, B.A. (3 vols.) Perhaps it was not a bad idea to give the
merely English reader some chance of appreciating the extraordinary qualities of the
author of “Le Père Goriot,” “Le Peau de Chagrin,” and “La Recherche de
l’Absolu” (neither of which is, the general reader may be told, in this collection):
but Balzac is not a writer with a soul in him, and the experiment need not be carried
any further. Those who know nothing of Balzac, and who read novels simply for
excitement, will be glad of these three volumes, and the glimpse they give of an
unique writer; but to studious readers Balzac’s novels have an interest which is
mainly psychological. The preface (here translated) to the “Comédie Humaine” is
a strange presumptuous medley, which raises, like all the author’s most characteristic
works, the question of perfect sanity—a question which Mr. Leslie Stephen
once opened very acutely, and dismissed too curtly. To have read through a story
of Balzac’s is to have passed through one of those wonderfully vivid dreams which
leave you puzzled and lost at the moment of awaking. It seems to be generally
admitted that his writings do not tend to make his readers “immoral” in the usual
sense of the adjective, but there is something ineffably droll in his patronage of
“Christianity, especially Catholic Christianity,” and that defence of his own writings
which the reader may amuse himself by studying in the preface. He is not only
conservative, he is monarchical, and objects to representative Government, if it
“hands us over to the rule of the masses.” But what chiefly concerns those who buy
novels, or send for them to the libraries, is the quality of the stories, and they may
depend upon getting a full measure of excitement, with some instruction, out of
“La Maison du Chat qui pelote” and the companion stories.</p>








<pre>





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